Fully Lohan
Lindsay Lohan gears up for 'Herbie' -- and growing up
LOS ANGELES -- Being tabloid fodder is no picnic, and Lindsay Lohan has the bruises to prove it.
Four days before she shows up for an interview at a Century City hotel in a clingy Anna Molinari dress, Alexander McQueen high heels, and Cartier ''friendship" ring, a paparazzo desperate to snap photographs of the 18-year-old actress crashed his car into her Mercedes.
''That's where these bruises came from," says the slim, freckled teenager, pointing out a cluster of purple contusions on her leg. ''You don't realize how shaken up you get when something like that happens, and then to have people taking your picture at the same time, and then to have a racing movie coming out that's for children -- I panicked and I was shaking and upset and didn't want to go to the hospital to get X-rays because I didn't want the publicity to affect the movie in any way."
The movie in question, ''Herbie: Fully Loaded," which opens Wednesday, stars Lohan as the tomboyish Maggie Peyton. Visiting a junkyard to pick a car for her college graduation present, Maggie winds up rescuing a dilapidated
Defying her father (Michael Keaton), Maggie steers Herbie through a series of wild races before competing in a NASCAR showdown with her arrogant nemesis Trip Murphy (Matt Dillon).
''I think this movie is empowering for girls, and it's a good piece for me in terms of it being a coming-of-age story," Lohan says. ''In most of my other films I was in high school. Here, Maggie's just out of college. It's nice to be able to do something that I think will be acceptable to the fan base I've accumulated from my Disney movies, but subconsciously they'll see me getting older and maturing."
Those 'tweeners first latched on to Lohan as a role model when she made her film debut at age 11 playing cute twins in Disney's 1998 remake of ''The Parent Trap."
After a hiatus to attend high school in suburban Long Island, Lohan in 2003 starred as Jamie Lee Curtis's rebellious teenage daughter in Disney's family-friendly blockbuster ''Freaky Friday."
Maintaining the wholesome teen-next-door image become more complicated for Lohan after her star turn in last spring's hit comedy ''Mean Girls."
Over the past 18 months, every chapter of her pixie-to-vixen transformation has been monitored by celebrity weeklies and Internet fan sites that gossip about Lohan's club-hopping, dating habits, alleged feuds, family problems, weight fluctuations, and even her bust line, which Lohan herself spoofed during an appearance on ''Saturday Night Live" this spring.
''People have this obsession about writing about me in the tabloids right now and there's nothing I can really do about it," Lohan says.
The public fascination surfaced last summer during production on ''Herbie," according to the film's director, Angela Robinson. ''Occasionally on set Lindsay would go, 'Who is that guy over there?' And I'd look over and wonder, 'Yeah, who is that guy?' Then he'd pull out his camera and start snapping photos and we'd realize it was the paparazzi. Security would run off and take care of it."
Inquiring zoom lenses aside, the ''Herbie" production offered a few hurdles for Lohan. She'd never driven a stick shift before taking on the race-car-driver role, and temperatures soared to 137 degrees at the California Speedway where the movie's NASCAR finale was filmed.
The actress also needed to create on-screen chemistry -- with an automobile.
''It's a difficult challenge, actually, acting with a car," notes Robinson, who came to the Disney production after directing ''D.E.B.S.," a movie about schoolgirls-turned-spies.
''This movie works because Lindsay sells the fact that she believes Herbie's alive, and therefore the audience believes in Herbie too," Robinson says. ''Lindsay doesn't really do a lot of preparing. She just has this relatable quality so that she's able to pull stuff off that, honestly, if it were coming out of anyone else's mouth, people would just laugh you out of the theater."
During the making of ''Herbie," Lohan, a self-described workaholic, recorded her first album at night while acting during the day. She succumbed to exhaustion and caused production to shut down for a week.
What was she thinking?
''I wasn't!" Lohan admits. ''I know it was crazy. But I was just excited to be making an album. It was a lot of pressure, but I just went with it and ended up not taking care of myself." ''Speak," the album, has sold more than 1.5 million copies.
After ''Herbie" wrapped, Lohan switched agents. ''I needed to be at a place where I would find edgier roles that allow me to stretch. They got me this Robert Altman film right away," says Lohan. Later this summer she begins work with Altman on a film adaptation of Garrison Keillor's ''Prairie Home Companion," in which she'll play Meryl Streep's country-music-singing daughter.
''Being part of a great ensemble cast will, I think, make a difference in terms of finding other projects," she says. ''I want to work with the Mike Nicholses and the Ron Howards and those types of people. It only concerns me that when filmmakers read about me in the tabloids it's harder for them to take me seriously."
Though Lohan would like to join the ranks of young talents like Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman, and Keira Knightley, who've earned Serious Actress stature in the Hollywood community, her deepest, darkest performances have so far been confined to music videos.
''The most dramatic thing I've done was in the video for my song 'Over,' " Lohan says. ''I did this scene where I was breaking things and kicking the window in and they were like, 'Don't do that!,' and my ankle was bleeding and people were freaking out, and I kept going, and I ended up hysterically crying on the floor and everything.
''That felt so good for me because when you put yourself into that mode, it releases a lot of stress and anger that you may have. That's what I want to find more of."
But can she take on sexier parts without alienating the faithful following who like her perky? That's the $7.5 million question for Lohan, whose reported salary for ''Just My Luck," due out in the fall, makes her one of the highest paid actresses of her generation.
''I'm really thankful for this younger fan base who see my movies and listen to my music," she says. ''I have to be very strategic about my next roles. I do want to push the envelope a little bit, but it still has to be something that's acceptable because I have a lot of responsibilities, and I don't want to throw away everything that I've built."
Robinson, for one, believes Lohan can pull it off.
''I think Lindsay's only tapped about 15 percent of what she's capable of as an actor because it hasn't been required of her yet. In 'Herbie,' she was so excited to do this hospital scene where she gets in a fight with Michael Keaton.
''Here was this bit of drama that she could sink her teeth into and she was just like a colt, ready to race."
