Little Lindsay Lohan charmed middle-aged housewives as Ali Fowler on the soap “Another World” when she was around ten years old, and she charmed even more people when she made her first movie, Disney’s 1998 “The Parent Trap” remake. The original was a well-loved chestnut, but Lindsay’s performance among others, gave the world a remake that was even better than the original, which is quite a rarity.
So two more Disney films followed, which were made for TV, “Life-Size”(2000), and “Get A Clue”(2002), and then she hit it big again with 2003’s “Freaky Friday”, another Disney remake of one of their classics. Her status as a Disney princess continued with “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen” in 2004, until she had her breakthrough lead role as Cady Heron in Tina Fey’s “Mean Girls”. It was a critical and commercial success, and Lindsay looked all set for stardom, especially when she went on to do yet another Disney vehicle based on past hits, which was 2005’s “Herbie: Fully Loaded”. That wasn’t a remake though, just the fifth movie in a series of Herbie films, of which the last one before that was in 1980.
That was the last of her hits. The year 2006 saw her in three films: “Just My Luck”, “A Prairie Home Companion” and “Bobby”. The first had her in the lead role, and it bombed, with around $17 million at the box office. “A Prairie Home Companion” was legendary director Robert Altman’s last film. It was an ensemble piece, as most of his films, and grossed around $20 million, which is about right for this auteur. “Bobby” was directed by Emilio Estevez, and it made maybe $12 million, as well as receiving mixed reviews.
She was full-blown tabloid material by the time Herbie was shown, and her first 2007 film was the infamous “Georgia Rule”, where a studio executive’s scathing letter to her criticizing her for all the late night partying which delayed filming was outed on the net. It was just more fodder for the tabloids, and the bad publicity contributed to the film’s $19 million take.
But all that was nothing compared to “I Know Who Killed Me” later the same year. She played a stripper there, and the film made only $7 million at the box office. Aside from that, the film, and Lohan, were dishonoured with an armload of Razzie awards, with Lindsay tying with herself for Worst Actress, seeing as she was nominated twice for her role as twins. A far cry from her twin turn in “The Parent Trap”, but that’s life with LiLo for now.