Lindsay Lohan on Growing Up Under the Spotlight: ‘Why Didn’t Anyone Just Go and Take Me Out of There, Protect Me More?’

Tommy McArdleThu, February 26, 2026 at 4:49 PM UTC

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Lindsay Lohan on April 30, 2003; Lindsay Lohan on July 28, 2025Credit: Gregg DeGuire/WireImage; Cindy Ord/Getty -

Lindsay Lohan is reflecting on growing pains she experienced while living under the public eye as a teenager and young adult in the 2000s

Lohan shot to stardom as a child actor in movies like The Parent Trap and gained additional fame for starring in Mean Girls in 2004

The actress will next appear on screen in the Hulu adaptation of author Sophie Stava's book Count My Lies

Lindsay Lohan is looking back on her difficult experience of living under the spotlight in her teens.

Lohan, 39, appeared on the cover of Vogue Arabia's latest issue. In her interview with the outlet, published Thursday, Feb. 26, the actress said the public attention she faced following the release of 2004's Mean Girls "was all so overwhelming and consuming." Lohan was 17 years old when she filmed the hit teen comedy.

“I should have listened to my mom and dad and moved back to New York. But I was young and wanted to be in LA. And I didn’t know," she said of the years that followed the release of that film, which ultimately led her to move to Dubai, the largest city in the United Arab Emirates, in 2014. "So yeah, while a lot of it was fun, it was hard when I was young. It was a double-edged sword. Now I look back and wonder, ‘Why didn’t anyone just go and take me out of there, protect me more?’ You don’t know how to do that yourself when you’re a teenager.”

Lohan only rarely appeared in movies and television in the 2010s. She later re-emerged as a movie star in recent years when she began making Netflix rom-coms like Falling for Christmas, Irish Wish and Our Little Secret. The actress also began dating her husband, a financier from Kuwait named Bader Shammas, by 2020. The couple got engaged in 2021, married in 2022 and welcomed their son Luai in July 2023.

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Lindsay Lohan (right) and her husband Bader Shammas on Jan. 15, 2026Credit: Tristan Fewings/Getty

“I wasn’t having fun in the business anymore,” she told the outlet of the years she spent removed from Hollywood. “I wasn’t finding roles I loved. It’s not a life I wanted to live, you know? It’s not a real life. It pushed me so far away that I moved to the other side of the world. And I’m so glad I followed my gut.”

As Vogue Arabia noted in its cover story, Lohan has pulled double duty as an executive producer on her recent movies, including on 2025's sequel to Freaky Friday, Freakier Friday. The actress said that she is now more interested in working with her films' production from start to finish.

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Lindsay Lohan at the premiere of 2003's Freaky FridayCredit: Albert L. Ortega/WireImage

“With age comes a different kind of confidence," Lohan said. “When I was younger, I wasn’t so comfortable saying how I felt about a character and being involved with the process of it. And I love that part now. I always felt like I had too many people around me and that I was being guided in a different direction. And now it feels good to steer my own ship.”Aside from Freakier Friday, Lohan most recently acted when she appeared in a voice role in one episode of The Simpsons last year. She is next expected to appear in the Hulu television series Count My Lies, an adaptation of the novel by author Sophie Stava. Lohan told the outlet that she expects to begin filming the series in New York in the next month.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”