You Think You Know Lindsay?

While you've been doing your thing, Lindsay Lohan has been quietly vision-boarding her way right into the most prolific years of her life and now, she's ready to talk about them.

- By Madeleine Frank Reeves

So, listen. I could start by telling you how I grew up with Lindsay Lohan. How I can chart my entire childhood by which of her classic movies was playing in the background (The Parent Trap as I processed my own parents' divorce; Freaky Friday, their second marriage; Mean Girls while I figured out what the actual hell high school was). But I won't, because every girl born within a decade of the now-36-year-old actor has some version of the same story at least one film from LiLo's decades-deep career that's sat with them in a personality-forming way. And, of course, some narrative they've crafted in their mind about the nature of her celebrity and what she's like as a person all this time later.

I'm going to focus instead on the right now, because Lindsay is right here in front of me in the iconically freckled flesh. She's come all the way from her home in Dubai to shoot a cover story that's a very big deal for obvious reasons. Getting the famously private star-so private that she moved to Dubai because paparazzi are illegal there-to sit down for a candid interview has been a feat nearly a year in the making. And we have a lot of new ground to cover.