Why I’m Rooting For Lindsay Lohan’s Hollywood Comeback

I am pleased to announce that we are living through the second coming of our lord and saviour, Lindsay Lohan.

In recent years, we’ve witnessed the redemption arcs of ’00s pop culture queens like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, who reclaimed their narratives after years of being painted as villains. After the success of the #FreeBritney movement and the revelation that Paris Hilton’s airhead persona was nothing more than a character, it seemed like only a matter of time before the next fallen noughties starlet got their second chance.

And let me tell you, there are few celebrities I am rooting harder for than Ms Lindsay Lohan.

Lohan is the first celebrity I was ever a stan of. After her roaring success in The Parent Trap (1998), Lohan won the hearts of many — including my own — when she gave us hit after goddamn hit.

The Meteoric Rise Of Lindsay Lohan Is One For The Ages

First, we had Freaky Friday with Jamie-Lee Curtis, then just months later we were blessed with Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen and Mean Girls — back-to-back hits — before smashing it out of the park with Herbie: Fully Loaded. I mean, talk about a body of work.

In addition to being a multi-award-winning actress, Lohan also delivered two criminally underrated albums in Speak and A Little More Personal (Raw) in 2004 and 2005 respectively.

While it is easy to reduce Lohan to nothing more than a meme due her chaotic party habits, her Lindsay Lohan Beach Club TV show and many court appearances, her absolute superstardom in the early 2000s must not be forgotten.

She wasn’t just a ’00s it girl, she was a critically acclaimed actress who was widely regarded as one of the brightest young stars in Hollywood at the time.

“I would watch Lindsay to learn what it is to be a film actor,” Tina Fey once told People. “At the same time, Lindsay really was a teenager,” Fey said of the actor, who was 16 when Mean Girls filmed in 2003.

The Higher You Climb, The Further You Fall

Just as we were all there to witness Ms Lindsay Lohan’s rise, the entire world was there to watch on in horror as Hollywood’s former golden child had a spectacular fall from grace.

There is no denying the fact that Lindsay Lohan has made her fair share of mistakes — and her 20 court appearances, five rehab stints, and jail sentence are living proof of that. And while I’m not trying to wipe Lohan clean of any accountability for her plethora of indiscretions, I do think she is uniquely deserving of a second chance.

At this point, we know all too well that anyone who is thrust into the spotlight at a young age is lucky if they survive into adulthood unscathed. If we’ve learned anything from the stories of Drew Barrymore, Amanda Bynes, Britney Spears and — perhaps most recently — Aaron Carter, it’s that the industry has repeatedly failed the children that are so often forced into it by people with questionable motives.

Not to mention, Lohan’s rise to fame coincided with a decade that was far from kind to women — something that is made glaringly obvious when you look back at the infamous ‘Bimbo Summit’ headline that now screams of misogyny but was all too common during the Paris, Britney and Lindsay era of tabloid journalism.

But Lohan’s life, specifically, gets even more complicated.

After a turbulent childhood, she moved out of home and to Los Angeles at just 15 years old, where she was given the independence and funds to live an adult life years before any of us have the maturity to actually do so.

So it’s hardly surprising that she opened up about struggles with substance abuse years later.

“Substance abuse is a disease, which unfortunately doesn’t go away over night. I am working hard to overcome it and am taking positive steps…forward every day,” she tweeted in 2010 after failing a court-ordered drug test.

“I am testing every single day and doing what I must do to prevent any mishaps in the future…This was certainly a setback for me but I am taking responsibility for my actions and I’m prepared to face the consequences.”

She’s Ready For Her Comeback, And We Welcome It With Open Arms

After the second coming of the likes of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears in recent years, it felt inevitable that we’d see a LiLo resurgence — but that doesn’t mean she didn’t have to work for it.

Lohan moved to Dubai in 2014, and recently told Vogue how this instilled a “certain sense of calm” in her after years of turbulence and chaos.

“It just really happened, how I moved to Dubai. I got there, and I felt a certain sense of calm,” Lohan told Vogue.

“I think it’s because paparazzi is illegal there. I really found that I had a private life, and I could just take time for myself. I decided to stay there because I really learned to appreciate what it is to go, do my work, and then leave and live a normal life.

“It took me moving there [to Dubai] to really appreciate the time that I take for myself, instead of just going, going, going and learning to say ‘no.’ And really putting myself first, and choosing the things that I want to do, wisely, for me first.”

After taking back control in her life, Lohan slowly dipped her toe back in the industry with smaller-screen projects like the MTV reality TV series Lindsay Lohan’s Beach Club — which ran for one season — and Australia’s own Masked Singer. 

But her new multi-picture deal with Netflix marks the start of her full-blown resurgence. She has already given us Falling For Christmas, and with Irish Wish set to drop on Netflix next year, we are witnessing the rebirth of the Lindsay Lohan romcom era and I, for one, am living for it.

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Lavender Baj is Junkee’s senior reporter and resident Lindsay Lohan superfan. Follow her on Twitter.