Lindsay Lohan

Interview By: Harry Kaplowitz
HarryKaplowitz@TheCinemaSource.com

'You can only act is if you're in high school for so long, I feel,' says a very comfortable, maturing-by-the-minute Lindsay Lohan.

As luck would have it ' pun intended ' there was a spot waiting for Lohan in director Donald Petrie's latest romantic comedy, Just My Luck. With the film, the director of such genre favorites as How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and Miss Congeniality is taking his lead actress into uncharted territory: being unlucky.

The film follows young Manhattan socialite Ashley Albright, considered by her friends to be the luckiest girl on the island. One fateful night, a kiss steals her luck and places it with her partner Jake Hardin, played by Chris Pine.

'It kind of was the perfect thing for me because it's not a dark film, so I can still keep the fan base that I've grown with,' Lohan said. 'It's a really lovely film; it's a romantic comedy, and it's my first romantic comedy ' and I get to kiss Chris in it.'

Lohan also stressed the importance of maintaining that fan base throughout her growth as an actress, one she refers to as 'a coming-of-age thing' for her.

'It's a great film for me; it still has a good message and I think that's important. And I still have the young audience to look out for and this is acceptable for the younger audience and for people that are older than me,' she said. 'And it was hard for me to find that kind of film, so it was nice that I found it in this.'

But it seems the one thing on everyone's mind isn't Just My Luck, which opens nationwide Friday. It was her upcoming bevy of independent releases, which starts on June 9 with the release of Robert Altman's musical comedy A Prairie Home Companion.

For Lohan, the choice to sign onto Altman's ensemble cast wasn't a difficult one.

'Would you turn down a movie that Robert Altman was directing and Meryl Streep was playing your mother in' I wouldn't recommend it even if you did say yes,' the 19-year-old actress stated simply.

Lohan said that the experience of working with a veteran troupe of actors ' including Streep, Kevin Kline, John C. Reilly, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson, Lily Tomlin and Virginia Madsen ' was a humbling experience, to say the least.

'I would look at the call sheet, and I would just see these actors that I didn't believe were coming onto the set everyday,' she said. 'It was a wonderful experience and a good experience for me as my first independent film.

'And it's just one of those movies where it's always going to be nice to have to look back on.'

But Lohan says that the film turned out very well, unconventional though it may be.

'We don't really have musicals that are done like this movie, and Robert Altman obviously has a way of kind of incorporating comedy and the darker side in films,' she said. 'And it's kind of a creepy movie in its own way, but it's still really funny.'

But for Lohan, the next two years have been planned out for her, shooting two films back-to-back all while promoting two other films. And what makes this next two years different from any other two years in Lohan's acting career'

All of her upcoming films are independent releases.

'They're independent, so it's so much easier, I feel,' Lohan said off-the-cuff. 'Seriously, it feels like a lot less pressure and there's not as much money, so you shoot for a shorter amount of time.'

Lohan said she chose to do the films not because they were independent films, but because the characters she would be playing intrigued her more than most other roles.

'I think it's just those are the projects that have caught my eye. They're different, and the characters are all so different from anything I've done,' she said. 'All of them have an arc, and it's nice to play different people and go into more mature roles as I grow.'

So what are the roles Lindsay is maturing into'

After promoting Just My Luck and A Prairie Home Companion, she'll take to the circuit to plug her two historical-based pictures.

First up is Emilio Estevez's Bobby, set against the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, in which she plays a woman who marries her friends to get them out of a Vietnam tour. After that, she'll promote Jarrett Schaeffer's Chapter 27, a film about Mark David Chapman in the days leading up to his murder of Beatles frontman John Lennon.

'I love my character in the movie. She's such a genuine fan of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. She's the light in the movie ' she's like the Hitchcock blonde,' Lohan said of her Chapter 27 character. 'And Jarrett Schaeffer's a great director and he's done a great job with it and Jared Leto did a great job with it.'

During that time, Lohan will begin work on two films co-starring two Hollywood heavies. She'll play a reckless teen mentored by Aaron Eckhart in Bill and she'll share the screen with Adrien Brody in Saved! director Brian Dannelly's Speechless, a modern-day take on Edmond Rostand's 'Cyrano de Bergerac.' Both films are due out in 2007.

So what's the mentality that keeps Lindsay Lohan going throughout her hectic schedule of promoting and filming'

'It's experience ' I want to have as much experience as I can,' she said humbly. 'I mean, you only live once.'