It seems as if Lindsay Lohan might be most comfortable playing anyone but herself. Lohan has constantly imitated Marilyn Monroe in photo shoots over the years, and the actress was long attached to Matthew Wilder’s Linda Lovelace biopic, Inferno: A Linda Lovelace Story. The film seemed stalled out due to the Lohan commitments that could never come to fruition. Lohan was dropped from the project in November of 2010, and Malin Ackerman stepped in to the role shortly after. So, if you can’t be Marilyn and you can’t be Lovelace, who can Lohan be?
If a report from Deadline Hampstead is to be believed, Elizabeth Taylor. I’m sorry, what?
The outlet reports, quite bizarrely, that Lohan is “in early talks for the female lead in Lifetime’s original movie Elizabeth & Richard: A Love Story, chronicling the enduring love of movie icons Taylor and Richard Burton, whose fiery romance was the most notorious, publicized and celebrated love affair of its day.” The film has been written by Christopher Monger, who also penned the Temple Grandin biopic and directed the forgotten Hugh Grant-starrer The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain). Let’s parse that – Lindsay Lohan might play Elizabeth Taylor in a TV movie written by a guy most famous for writing an award-winning film about a high-functioning autistic woman who loved animals. Well, okay, you’d think Monger would be getting better work, but them’s the breaks, I guess.
Lohan has, in gentle terms, not had the easiest go of things in the last few years. She’s been in and out of rehab and jail, and her continually poor decisions have been meticulously chronicled by the press. Lohan has often proclaimed that she wants to work, but her personal life has intruded on her ability to get (and keep) jobs. She has recently appeared in Machete, starred in the straight-to-TV-and-DVD flick Labor Pains, had a character arc on the now-cancelled series Ugly Betty, and completed work on InAPPropriate Comedy (once known as Underground Comedy). That is a dismal collection of gigs.
Of course, one could argue that Lohan’s life in the spotlight could prepare for such a film that focuses on another famous starlet who rose to prominence from a child star while often being in the public’s eye. But, of course, one could also argue that Lohan’s talent is still incredibly unproven (how long are we going keep pointing to Mean Girls and The Parent Trap as examples of her chops?) and to cast her as one of Hollywood’s most beloved icons is stupid at best and insulting at worst.