Lindsay Lohan calls out ‘frustrating' Hollywood pattern of being pigeonholed, recalls being hounded by paparazzi: ‘I have extreme PTSD from it'

Indian Express

2 days ago

Lindsay Lohan, best known for her roles in Mean Girls and The Parent Trap, recently shared she's still struggling to land serious roles in Hollywood, even after all these years in the industry. In a recent conversation with The Times UK, the actor opened up about how frustrating it is to still be boxed into the same kind of roles.
In an interview to promote her new movie Freakier Friday, a sequel to the 2003 classic Freaky Friday, Lindsay opened up about taking time off from acting post-2008, saying she was 'losing that feeling of excitement about doing a film' and needed to focus on her personal life. But with her recent comebacks and having left California for good by settling in Dubai, she says she's now eyeing a more diverse range of projects. 'Yeah, I do think I was pigeonholed,' she said. Lindsay recalled how working on A Prairie Home Companion with Meryl Streep felt like a turning point. She thought she'd cracked it, but years later, she's still fighting. 'Which is frustrating. Because, well, you know me as this, but you also know I can do that. So let me! Give me the chance. I have to break that cycle and open doors to something else, leaving people no choice. And in due time, if Martin Scorsese reaches out, I'm not going to say no,' she said.
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Apart from Freakier Friday, the 39-year-old is also executive producing Count My Lies, a Hulu thriller where she plays a manipulative nanny who inserts herself into a family full of secrets. Lindsay Lohan said she misses the kind of films Hollywood doesn't make much anymore, like Breakfast at Tiffany's or All About Eve. 'There are not many major movies I want to go and see that are like that — there's a gap and I'm craving to do work like that,' she said. Earlier this year, the actor also admitted she doesn't want to keep doing Netflix rom-coms forever, even though she has done three in a row. 'There's more I want to do.'
In the latter part of the interview, Lohan spoke about the trauma she faced being hounded by paparazzi at the height of her fame. She said those moments still haunt her. 'I don't ever want my family to go through what I went through. I have extreme PTSD from it. It's not safe. It's not fair,' she said. That's one of the reasons the actor quietly packed up and left Hollywood in 2015, choosing Dubai instead. Over the years, she's said she feels safer there, no paparazzi, no constant invasion of space. 'You can't take someone's photo without asking. It's just different,' she told Live with Kelly and Mark.
Lindsay Lohan met her now-husband, Bader Shammas, in Dubai at a restaurant. She said she knew that night he was 'the one.' They got married in 2022 and had their son, Luai, in 2023.