‘Freakier Friday’ star says she doesn’t want family to experience being chased like she was in her 20s
Lindsay Lohan knew from the moment she starred in “The Parent Trap” that she wanted to be an actress, but fame was not something she was prepared for.
The “Freakier Friday” star was infamously chased and prodded by paparazzi during her teens and early 20s. She was pals with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, who experienced similar treatment from the media in the early 2000s.
Due to Lohan’s unique upbringing — going from child star to years of dodging paparazzi — the star and her husband, Bader Shammas, decided to raise their son, Luai, in Dubai.
Lindsay Lohan has PTSD from her time being chased by paparazzi in the early 2000s. (Photo by James Devaney/GC Images)
“I don’t ever want my family to experience being chased by the paparazzi the way I was. They were terrifying moments I had in my life — I have PTSD to the extreme from those things,” Lohan recently told The Times.
“The most invasive situations. Really scary. And I pray stuff like that never comes back. It’s not safe. It’s not fair,” she added.
“I don’t ever want my family to experience being chased by the paparazzi the way I was. They were terrifying moments I had in my life — I have PTSD to the extreme from those things.”
Decades after Lohan spent the majority of her 20s trying to evade paparazzi, she has noticed it’s not as bad for her as it used to be.
“I feel that it doesn’t happen as badly now as it did. It was way worse when I was younger, but now, because of social media, people can tell their own story in the way that you want it to be told. It has reclaimed the ownership of your life.”
Lindsay Lohan was 11 when she starred in “The Parent Trap.” (Reuters)
“We didn’t have that and so, no, I don’t think anybody chose that life, but what I have learnt over time is how to separate my private life and public life, and that was difficult for me because nobody ever teaches you how to do that,” Lohan told the outlet.
Lohan made the move to Dubai from Los Angeles in 2014.
Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton in November 2006. (Photo by Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)
“I lived like that and it’s not who I am. Dubai is a safe place where we can just have a normal life, outside of what I call ‘the noise’. Where my husband and I can see what is right for our child. It’s not about me anymore,” she explained.
Lohan previously revealed the lack of privacy in LA left her stressed out.
“It’s hard in L.A. Even taking my son to the park in L.A., I get stressed. I’m like, ‘Are there cameras?’ In New York, there’s no worry; no one bothers us,” the “Mean Girls” star told Elle magazine in May.
Lindsay Lohan and her husband, Bader Shammas, live in Dubai with their son. (Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Netflix)
“Everyone has their own thing going on. There’s a different kind of energy in New York. I’d rather have downtime in New York than I would in L.A.”
“But the nice thing about L.A. is, I like space [and you get that here]. But I’m thinking as I’m saying this, the funny thing is, in Dubai I get all of those things. I get the privacy, I get the peace, I get the space. I don’t have to worry there. I feel safe.”
The “Freaky Friday” star told Bustle in 2024 that her childhood was tainted by growing up in the spotlight.
“I feel like some of [my work] got overshadowed by paparazzi and all that kind of stuff when I was younger, and that’s kind of annoying. I wish that part didn’t happen.”
Chad Michael Murray, Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan star in “Freakier Friday.” (Stephanie Augello/Variety via Getty Images)
“I feel like that kind of took on a life of its own. So that’s why I wanted to disappear. I was like, ‘Unless there’s no story here, they’re not going to focus on just my work,'” she told the outlet.
Recently, Lohan was a guest on “LIVE with Kelly and Mark,” where she explained she lives a “normal life” in Dubai.
“It’s just far away from Hollywood. And I live a very normal life. There’s no worry of like, I can’t go eat at this place because someone’s going to take a picture of my son. It’s just — I feel very safe.”
Lindsay Lohan left Los Angeles for Dubai in 2014. (James Devaney/GC Images)
“It’s not legal,” she explained, of paparazzi taking photos. “You can’t even take a picture of someone else if you’re at a restaurant. You have to ask the person. Which is a big difference. The privacy is unique.”
Since her return to the big screen, Lohan, who stars alongside Jamie Lee Curtis and Chad Michael Murray in “Freakier Friday,” said she’s found that prioritizing herself makes a huge difference in her overall well-being.
For Lohan, family is also a priority.
Lindsay Lohan says her family is her priority. (Getty Images)
“I mean, it’s the most important thing: my husband, my son and me,” she told Bustle. “It’s all about balance and, as I said, routine. Especially when you have a kid, routine is the most important thing. And whatever their routine is, I’ve got to live by that.”
Lindsay Lohan on Her 22-Year Friendship with Jamie Lee Curtis: ‘She Was There When I Was Going Through a Lot’ (Exclusive)
The two women reunite on ‘Freakier Friday,’ the long-awaited sequel to their 2003 comedy, in theaters Aug. 8
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Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis have an unbreakable bond.
The two women join forces once more in Freakier Friday, the long-awaited sequel to their 2003 Freaky Friday remake about a woman and her teen daughter who accidentally switch bodies.
Speaking with PEOPLE for this week’s cover story, Lohan, 39, reflects on her 22-year friendship with Curtis, 66, and how the Oscar winner was present during a particularly challenging time in her life.
“Jamie was with me at a time in my life when I was going through a lot publicly,” says Lohan, who was 17 when Freaky Friday premiered but not yet 16 when they began shooting.
She adds of Curtis, “She was privately really there for me.”
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And the vulnerability goes both ways. As Curtis tells PEOPLE of Lohan, “I know I can trust her. And I can’t say that about a lot of people.”
“If I tell her something, it’s gonna stay with her,” the Knives Out actress explains. “We’ve both been through hard things, ’cause we’re alive and life is hard. And we’re not dead yet. So the truth of our experience together, it belies all of the kind of showbizzy stuff.”
“We connected, and we really stayed connected. And that is special and rare for me,” Curtis adds.
For Lohan, ” ‘safe’ is a very important word” — and it’s one that Curtis embodies as someone in the Mean Girls star’s orbit.
“I have to feel safe around people. And Jamie is one of those people for me,” Lohan explains, addressing her friend and costar directly, “Like, I feel very safe with you. I feel safe telling you things.”
“So it’s — I know you said ‘trust,’ but for me it’s ‘safe,’ ” she tells Curtis.
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Freakier Friday marks a milestone in the two women’s friendship, as they continue the story — this time with Lohan’s character Anna as a mother to her own teen daughter (played by Julia Butters) and Curtis returning as Anna’s mom Tess, who is now a grandmother.
More than two decades on from the first film, Lohan still remembers a “very important” bit of advice Curtis gave her on the set of Freaky Friday.
“You said, ‘The way you show up to set every day depicts how everyone’s day is going to go. And you set the tone. So leave everything or anything that there may be at home,’ ” Lohan recalls. “That has stuck with me. And I always find that to be so important.”
Freakier Friday is in theaters Aug. 8.
Why Lindsay Lohan’s Comeback Is Surprisingly Healing
The return of the Freakier Friday star to Hollywood is thrilling my inner tween in a way I didn’t quite anticipate.
As I sat in a theater watching Lindsay Lohan’s Freakier Friday early this week, I felt overcome by a feeling I hadn’t experienced since I was approximately 14 years old: genuine fandom.
We all have those celebrities who became the object of our obsession from a young age and for me, during the late ’90s, it was Lindsay Lohan.
On my ninth birthday, I went to see the Lohan-led The Parent Trap remake in theaters, and instantly I was hooked. I’ve seen that movie so many times I can recite it word for word, from the opening sequences at Camp Walden for girls (“I’m from Napa, that’s northern California”) to the Natalie Cole–scored happy-ending montage. From then on I was devoted to Lohan, watching every movie she appeared in from Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen to Freaky Friday and of course, Mean Girls.
That may be why, as I watched Lindsay in Freakier Friday, the sequel to the 2003 film Freaky Friday, one thought continuously crossed my mind: Nature is healing. Or, perhaps, millennial girlhood is healing, finally.
It’s become common to look back on the era in which both Lohan and I grew up, the early 2000s, and hang our heads in regret when revisiting how young starlets of the era were treated. You couldn’t be famous back then and not face a crushing amount of scrutiny, from being asked continuously if you were a virgin (and you better say yes) to actually being physically violated (remember up-skirt paparazzi pics?)
As we all know, Lohan was among the young stars who were treated with particular venom. Once praised for her adorable demeanor and better-than-good acting skills, she soon became the butt of nearly every joke, abused and harassed by a tabloid press corp who derided her as trashy, slutty, and very, very messy. As her personal demons spiraled out of control, the world watched and judged, and by the time I was in my 20s, I could only look at her with sadness every time she showed up in the latest US Weekly.
Sitting in the theater, I began to wonder what this degradation of so many of the women myself and my generation idolized as tweens did to us collectively. Because when the press lashed heaps of trauma onto Lohan, Amanda Bynes, Britney Spears, and so many of the others we adored, it stung. It was as if the entire world was collectively saying that these girls whose photos we had once tacked on our bedroom walls were unworthy and disgusting; women who we should feel ashamed for ever looking to as role models. It was a judgment on them, but also, a judgment on us.
It’s not surprising that this trauma had lasting effects. After making it through years of relentless tabloid scrutiny, Lohan effectively vanished. In 2014 at age 27, she moved to London and then to Dubai—about as far away as you could get from Hollywood—and stopped acting entirely. There she met a local businessman, Bader Shammas, got married, and had a son. One of the greatest benefits of living there, she said, is that paparazzi aren’t legal.
“You can’t take a picture of someone else if you’re in a restaurant,” she told Kelly Ripa on Live With Kelly and Mark in an interview last week. “You have to ask the person, which is a big difference from here. Privacy is key.”
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Lohan is now 39, and during the past few years has made a slow return to acting, appearing in Netflix films and a cameo in the Mean Girls musical movie. Freakier Friday, though, is her biggest project in more than a decade, and it is a reminder of something that’s always been true: Lindsay Lohan is an incredibly compelling actor.
Watching the movie, I found myself smiling at random moments because of pure nostalgia. One sequence, in which Lohan’s character plots out a plan of sabotage, reminded me so much of a scene from The Parent Trap it was uncanny. The film leans into the throwback of it all just enough, with callbacks to the original and a cameo from Elaine Hendrix, who played the iconic and villainous would-be stepmother Meredith Blake alongside Lohan in The Parent Trap. In the new movie, Lindsay’s character, Anna, is now a mother and swaps bodies with her teen daughter, Harper, who she immediately gives a millennial makeover. Her hair is straightened to death, of course, just like Lohan’s was in the original movie, when she played the rebellious teen.
It seems that Lohan’s also having fun leaning into the nostalgia of her old roles on the Freakier Friday press tour, the first big one she’s done since returning to acting. Eagle-eyed fans immediately recognized callbacks to some of her iconic outfits from Parent Trap, and she one-upped them by perfectly recreating the purple dress from the last scene of Freaky Friday for the new film’s London premiere. She accessorized the updated version of the gown, made by designer Ludovic de Saint Sernin, with a red guitar-shaped Judith Leiber purse, an ode to her character, Anna’s, rock-star persona.
Freakier Friday is genuinely fun, a made-for-teen-girls type of movie that really doesn’t exist anymore. It’s timely in that it pokes fun at generational differences (in a non-cringe way!) but also has a heartwarming message about mothers and daughters. The clear stars are Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays Lohan’s mother in both the original and the new film, and they stand together as two experienced and talented actors who are having a blast. A series of bloopers during the credits show the two and their costars laughing and joking like old friends. They were peers, something that shouldn’t feel radical to say, but does, given the way Lohan has been viewed in the industry for so long.
As I watched, I kept asking myself why it had taken so long to get here. Lohan faced her own internal struggles, sure, but she shouldn’t have had to endure years of abuse and degradation just for being in the public eye. And sure, the world has welcomed her back with open arms, but only once she vanished for years and returned to us a “respectful” wife and mother. While it feels gratifying to see her thrive, she also didn’t deserve to fall so hard.
And watching Lindsay’s comeback is healing for us too. Because every time a tabloid headline or an embarrassing photo tore her down, it also was a judgment on us. So many of the women millennials admired were destroyed in this way, becoming objects of ridicule and embarrassment that left us feeling ashamed for our stanning. Getting to watch that all be reversed, and even apologized for, is gratifying. I just wish it never happened in the first place.
Lindsay Lohan Is Feeding the Millennials on the Freakier Friday Press Tour
Lindsay Lohan’s Freakier Friday press tour marches on with another stunning look from the 37-year-old: a slinky white Jacquemus dress with a burst of white tulle at the hem, which she wore to the New York City premiere on July 28. Playing into the summer-goddess vibes, Lohan wore her long blonde hair in perfectly defined waves, with a delicate touch of bronze to highlight her green eyes. The finishing touch? A pair of leopard-print stiletto sandals.
Earlier in the day Lohan was photographed channeling teenage Anna Coleman (the character played in a punk girl band called Pink Slip in the first film, lest you forget) in a Pink Slip band tee and a leather wrap miniskirt with an oversize buckle. Cue “Take Me Away.”
Though it’s 2003’s Freaky Friday that got the sequel, Lohan seems to be referencing her greatest hits throughout the press tour. She appeared to pay homage to both Hallie Parker and Annie James—the twins she played in the 1998 classic The Parent Trap—first in a butter yellow tweed Balmain lady jacket (worn by Hallie as Annie), then in a jacquard Roberto Cavalli minidress with a mandarin collar (worn by Hallie as herself).
And let’s give it up for this pose, which is instantly recognizable as a nod to the paparazzi image taken of LiLo on set of Just My Luck in 2005. The photo was so adorable, the production team ended up using it for the film poster.
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If you can believe it, Lohan wore two more looks on July 28: A long-sleeve Mickey Mouse tee and jeans, which she wore for a Sirius XM interview with Hoda Kotb, and an embellished black halter dress, which she wore for an appearance on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon.
The Mickey Mouse shirt while promoting a Disney film? World class, no notes. Which leaves us the black halter dress, which Lohan paired with matching embellished sandals. This is LiLo at her most Lindsay Lohan, no gimmicks, no bells or whistles. While we love a throwback, it’s also just great to see our girl thriving as her full self. Love you, LiLo!
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