Lindsay Lohan Wishes She Had Social Media During Her Rise To Fame

In just over a week, Lindsay Lohan returns to our screens with her new Netflix holiday movie Falling For Christmas. It’s her first major movie since her heyday in the early aughts, and the first of a two-picture deal she struck with Netflix earlier this year.

Lohan now lives in Dubai out of the limelight with her husband, Bader Shammas, but told Cosmopolitan that she’s envious that today’s celebrities get to control their image via social media — something she was not able to do. “When I first started out in the business, none of us had a say in how to control our own narrative,” the Freaky Friday star said. “There were paparazzi pictures, and then people ran with it. So I think it’s really good that in this day and age, people can say who they are and who they want to be. And I admire and appreciate that. I’m a little jealous because I didn’t have that.”

At the height of her stardom, Lohan’s personal life was a paparazzi favorite, with images of her first appearing in tabloids when she was only 11 after her breakthrough film The Parent Trap. She reportedly found herself in a love triangle with Hilary Duff and Aaron Carter in the early 2000s, was part of an iconic photograph in Paris Hilton’s car with Britney Spears, and paparazzi even followed her as she entered rehab.

While she uses social media now, she’s “trying her best” to keep up with the latest trends and make sure that her posts get a stamp of approval from her team: “I check everything before I post it. I’ll send it to people. Because you have to.”

With all that she’s been through in life, 2022 Lohan feels more Zen about her public persona. “You have to take everything people say with a grain of salt and just be you,” she told Cosmopolitan. “And slow down, because everyone’s so quick right now. People just don’t stop. You’ve got to chill.” Dubai Lohan is chill — she confesses to cooking a lot and going to bed by 9:30 p.m. because she “needs her seven to eight hours of sleep.”

In Falling For Christmas, Lohan stars as an heiress who suffers a skiing accident and is diagnosed with amnesia and is then taken in by an eligible bachelor who owns a lodge. The opportunity was an easy “yes” for Lohan. “It was really comforting to me, when I got the script, to see a movie that was a rom-com because it’s always fun to work on something lighthearted and family-oriented that makes people happy and provides a bit of an escape,” she said.