Chuck Liddell, 50 Cent, step aside. America has a new reigning tough guy, and her name is Lindsay Lohan. Tanned, toxed and tatted up with a badass reminder to “Breathe” on her right wrist, Lohan has been terrorizing Los Angeles like Godzilla with a really bad migraine. Forget the mojitos at Moonshadows with a chaser of Jew-baiting; that’s for old men like Mel Gibson. If you want to roll like LiLo, be ready to car-jack a Denali, run over some noncelebrity’s nonfamous foot, then stalk your ex-assistant’s mom at 100 mph. And that, according to the three strapping lunks whose SUV Lohan recently commandeered, is just what happens on Monday nights. Who knows how freaky she gets on Friday?
In a county with 8,000 bars and liquor stores and 4 million cars, getting a DUI is like winning the lottery. It’s not just a matter of playing the game; you need to get lucky, too. Lohan has won twice in two months, and now her two DUI charges, plus additional counts of misdemeanor hit and run, cocaine possession and driving with a suspended license could net her six years of high-security rehab.
But while Lohan’s wild ways now threaten to derail her career, they’ve put it on the fast track, too. Delete the car crashes, the panties Alzheimer’s, that tattooed reminder on her wrist that noses have more uses than snorting and what, really, do you have but a better-than-average sitcom actress? Sure, she’s got a few more facial expressions than Jessica Simpson, but so does a clock. Sure, she can reel off dialogue with the urgent fluency of a Gilmore Girls sidekick, but so can, uh, every Gilmore Girls sidekick. The next Streep? Lohan hasn’t even proven she’s next Ringwald yet.
And yet, those photos of her passed out in the SUV with the “30 Days Sober” medallions hanging from the rear-view mirror? That shot of her from Jeremy Piven’s birthday party, where she’s clad only in high heels and a tissue-thin bikini, her hand on her pale freckled hip, her pelvis thrust forward in bored, seductive contempt as she stands just inside the door of what looks like a generic hotel room? Part Suicide Girl, part Vargas Girl, she’s pure strychnine cheesecake, and who wouldn’t like a slice of that? On the big screen, she reads small, like Frankie Muniz with a Hooters rack—but when paparazzi flashbulbs start exploding, she expands into a scuzzy supernova capable of outshining every Dunst and Witherspoon in the sky.
And then, of course, there’s her mug shot. For Minneapolis check-forgers and Des Moines hookers, the flat light and familiar props of police department booking rooms are glamorizing forces—anonymous nobodies almost always look more intriguing, more dynamic when posing in front of a cinder-block wall with a numbered placard around their neck.
For celebrities, however, the opposite is true. Mug shots make them look ordinary, less interesting. In the mug shot that memorializes her December 2006 DUI, a sad-eyed Nicole Richie tilts her head forward in mousy contrition. Paris Hilton aims for demure haughtiness in her September 2006 mug shot, but with her long, hand-crafted nose reflecting light like the meticulously polished bumper of a ’57 Chevy, it doesn’t really work.
In contrast, the signature image from Lohan’s recent photo shoot with Santa Monica’s finest is an epic Scorsese movie compressed into a single frame—if there were People’s Choice Awards for mug shots, there’d be no contest this year. Even after an evening of alleged hard drinking, her frosted pink lipstick is still as neatly applied as a sorority girl’s. Her fake golden tresses are only slightly disheveled from her high-speed traipse down the Pacific Coast Highway. Her nose is raw and sunburnt, her gaze glazed with unfocused defiance. She looks damaged—a perfect Hollywood confection baked in the oven of affluence 10 minutes too long—but more dangerous than vulnerable.
Eventually, one suspects, all that energy will get converted into a felony, a tragedy or, if she can get her hands on the right script, an Oscar. And, in the meantime, since rehab and the alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelets don’t seem to be working, maybe she’ll hire a full-time chauffeur. That won’t solve all her problems, but drivers are cheaper than publicists and attorneys, and may at least prevent a third DUI.
Because you know how it works in Hollywood: By the time the threequel comes around, even the hardcore fans start losing interest in the series.