Lindsay Lohan faces grim career options
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Getting back to straight civilian life can be tough for anyone trying to leave a jail stint behind. But professional train wreck and sometime-actress Lindsay Lohan has a whole set of unique circumstances to navigate when she walks out of rehab again and tries to make a living.
At first, she'll need to rely on the tarnished-celebrity-appearance racket because her film career is shaping up to make Tara Reid's look like Sandra Bullock's.
Lohan's talent as an actor is well-established, but the appealing version of her image hasn't been onscreen for five years -- an ice age in movie-star terms. The tawdry nature of the past few years of her life combined with the increasingly limited options she now has available to her as a major investment risk mean that the film parts she is lining up are, at best, delightfully fringe. And much less lucrative.
Her next scheduled movie is the independent Linda Lovelace biopic "Inferno," which will feature Lohan as the '70s porn icon-turned-anti-porn-activist in a controversial role that writer-director Matthew Wilder has said will involve "full frontal nudity -- but it will not be cinematic nudity, it will be more violent nudity."
Lohan's next appearance in theaters will be Robert Rodriguez's gory grindhouse homage "Machete," which hits theaters September 3. Thus far, images from the film have shown the actress in a nun's habit either firing a machine gun or -- in a poster shot easily confused for the Lovelace project -- licking the tip of a gigantic gun barrel.
In a move meant to capitalize on her renewed troubles, Vince "Shamwow!" Offer is rereleasing his 1999 film "The Underground Comedy Movie" in the fall with added footage shot in June of Lohan as Marilyn Monroe mowing down a line of paparazzi with two flaring pistols.
Oscar bait this is not: If these parts were any lower rent, they'd be free.
On the other hand, sources close to Lohan said her nonfilm work will be the real income generator, even if it's much less than she would have gotten before her most recent mishaps and involves scraping the bottom of the dignity barrel.
Given her fresh notoriety, Lohan is likely to be handed $1 million by OK! for her first post-jail interview, and the clamor for stories about her time "inside" is likely to provide another muddy revenue stream. Her fee for New York and Los Angeles event appearances will land anywhere from $25,000-$100,000 -- even when they involve friends -- though many old haunts won't touch her now.
If Lohan swings into the Las Vegas orbit -- a dangerous milieu given her addictions -- she reportedly expects a cool million. Sin City sources have placed a cap in the half-million-dollar range, and she likely will coordinate an appearance at the Palms, which is owned by family friends, for a discounted price.
But sources close to Lohan, who has been e-mailing and texting from rehab, said she is determined to stay sober and rebuild her career. Looking at her recent resume, sobriety might be the easier of the two.
Her most recent appearances were in the ABC Family TV movie "Labor Pains" last year and the string of bombs "Just My Luck," "Bobby," "Chapter 27," "Georgia Rule" and "I Know Who Killed Me," which showcased her as a stripper in 2007. Her last real hit was the Disney revamp "Herbie Fully Loaded" in 2005.
"Inferno" producers Chris Hanley and Jordan Gertner claim that they remain committed to filming their take on the "Deep Throat" star in November, and they had photographer Tyler Shields take photos of Lohan in character as Lovelace in a seedy motel story line in the weeks before she was incarcerated. A pulpy one-sheet followed.
But then the actress was sentenced to 90 days in jail for violating her probation. Although Lohan was released August 2 after just 13 days, she then was shuttled to a UCLA facility for 90 more court-ordered days in rehab. The full sentence would keep her inside until the beginning of November, though recent reports have hinted that she could be released much earlier.
Even so, she might have to undergo "follow-up treatment," according to the prosecutor involved in putting Lohan away, and the costs of insuring her would at this point be larger than many producers would be willing to pay or would be wrapped into her low salary. Experts told The Hollywood Reporter last month that insuring Lohan could cost as much as 3% of a film's budget, which though not high in pure dollars would represent "extra money" a low-budget independent film rarely has.
There's always the TV route that served Robert Downey Jr. well when he appeared on "Ally McBeal" during his first comeback. Lohan did a four-episode arc on "Ugly Betty" in 2008 and could angle for a high-class guest stint on the small screen to re-accustom viewers to seeing her outside a courtroom.
Or she could try to resuscitate the recording career she abandoned in 2005, because the music world seems even more forgiving than Hollywood. Perhaps a guest vocal on a Kanye West track or a duets album with Amy Winehouse would do the trick.
After all, she's already covered "Rehab."
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