Actress Lindsay Lohan is a masterful vacation comedy star, however don’t underestimate how severely she takes Christmas. Particularly now that she’s a mother.
“I’m very nerdy when it comes to wrapping presents,” admits Lohan, by way of Zoom from her house in Dubai. “I love the art of wrapping. I will wrap any of my friends’ presents — just give it to me. I’ll help.”
This 12 months, although, there’s an additional incentive to go all out. “For my son, I want to do fun ones,” she says. “If he sees dinosaur wrapping paper, he gets excited. So that’s what’s fun for me — wrapping presents and putting up the tree. And filming every moment of it!” She’ll even bake brownies to make a path of “dirt” on the ground to accompany the standard plate of cookies for Santa.
For Lohan, celebrating her son’s second Christmas with financier husband Bader Shammas is a time to bask within the life she’s been cultivating over the previous a number of years. She and Shammas obtained collectively in 2020, married in 2022 and welcomed their first baby, Luai, final July.
Recent-faced in a easy oatmeal-colored tee, with that iconic purple hair pulled right into a ponytail, Lohan can’t cease smiling as she tells me concerning the modifications which have upended her life in one of the simplest ways. “It’s no longer about you, really,” she says. “For me, everything is about my child and my family and my household, and making sure that my work is in line with what’s going to work for everyone else.” This 12 months, she fervently hopes to remain house in Dubai for the vacations. “I would like to be settled here, because then I can do everything for the baby.”
Lohan has been up since 6:45 a.m.; that’s when she makes herself some tea, takes a little bit of time to jot down in her journal and tinkers with toddler meals. “I came up with new recipes this morning,” she says. “I’m trying this different kind of mashed potatoes and carrots.”
When she’s not nerding out over holidays and recipes, Lohan’s been busy carving out a spot as Christmas film icon — a really excellent pairing of style and actor. In Netflix’s “Our Little Secret,” the unique “Mean Girls” star attracts on her wacky-mix-up chops in a comedy about exes making an attempt to maintain their previous underneath wraps. It’s her second Netflix vacation film outing, after 2022’s “Falling for Christmas,” a throwback delight through which she performed an amnesiac socialite working as a resort maid (assume Goldie Hawn in “Overboard,” however Yuletide).
Lohan’s husky voice and purple hair are instantaneous cinematic consolation; she’s the uncommon actor who simply instantly places you on her facet, with a commonsense vibe and a breezy capability to chortle at herself. She radiates the same appeal off-screen as we speak, glowing as she describes the method of creating “Our Little Secret” and her twin function as producer on the challenge.
The film, for all its comedian good cheer, is rather less on the market, somewhat extra relationshippy, and Lohan, now 38, appreciates that. “Everyone in it just felt like a real person, nothing was too far-fetched or too, too crazy,” she says. “It’s nice to do something closer to real life situations that people go through. And to play a woman who’s kind of finding herself.”
Lohan beloved discovering herself utterly immersed within the challenge as a producer, “in terms of the wardrobe, that was a big deal, and seeing the sets early, just really being a part of the whole process from the beginning. And I love the casting.” Her castmates embody Tim Meadows — a fellow “Mean Girls” alum — and Kristin Chenoweth, who performs the hilariously imperious mom of Lohan’s character’s new boyfriend.
The movie, which shot in Atlanta, was the primary for Lohan as a working mother. “My son was six months old, and so I was learning for the first time really how to go and work and be on set and come home,” she says. “Where I was staying was really close to where we were filming. So it was pretty much just a normal day job, and I felt so blessed for that.”
It’s thrilling for viewers who bear in mind Lohan from her tween/teen turns in “The Parent Trap” and “Freaky Friday” — two of the all-time movie remakes, on this author’s opinion — to see her in a special stage of life. The actress has lived in Dubai — a rustic the place paparazzi is unlawful — since 2014. It was a genius transfer for a star who was handled, to place it mildly, horrendously by the media throughout its virulent beating-up-on-young-famous-women period within the early aughts.
Twenty years on, what higher time for a “Freaky Friday” sequel? She and Jamie Lee Curtis (who, in fact, performed Lohan’s mother within the 2003 film) shot “Freakier Friday” this summer season, with a launch date set a 12 months later. “It was really fun to play ourselves at a different time of our lives,” Lohan says. “We get to play these characters who’ve evolved, to see where they are now.”
The celebs have stayed in contact over the previous 20 years, one thing of a rarity in a enterprise. “We’re very close; we were just talking yesterday,” Lohan says. “We have this connection since the original, we’ve always stayed friends. Every day on set was just really exciting for us, and we both felt like teenagers every day. It’s like, is this real? Are we really having this much fun working?”
Few actors have achieved the dual-role factor in addition to Lohan, whose efficiency as each a rebellious teenager and mom-age Jamie Lee Curtis — trapped in stated teenager’s physique — was a factor of comedy legend. Her American/British flip in “The Parent Trap” was one other grasp class in duality. Immediately, Lohan additionally shuttles between two very totally different realms of actual life: homebody mother and dealing actor.
Lohan says she’s turn into more and more snug with the back-and-forth of capturing movies within the US, then leaning into household life in Dubai. “It doesn’t feel like a far trip anymore. If we take the night flight, then I get to New York in the morning, and I don’t get jet lagged or anything. It’s nice to sometimes disconnect from work completely, re-center for a bit and then go back into it.”
She’s discovered that contemplative life-style simpler within the UAE. “When I’m in the States, you always feel this need to be out doing something,” she says. “I find that when I’m home and centered and in my safe space, that’s when I actually get more ideas. When I have that quiet time, I feel the most productive, definitely.”
She’s additionally turn into a believer within the energy of journaling. “I do my manifestation and gratitude journaling every morning,” she says. “It’s one journal, the Five Minute Journal. I always get it as a gift for people, because I swear by it. I think if you set your intentions in the morning, and just have gratitude for the things you have, you don’t lose sight of the simple things in life. I am big on mindfulness.” Momentary mindfulness, anyway: Her son is making an attempt new biscuits at this time and he or she’s form of worrying about it. “I’m like, ‘Don’t take a big bite!’” she says with a nervous chortle. (She’s not a cool mother, she’s a watchful mother.)
On the day of our Alexa cowl shoot, Lohan says, “there was such a nice energy. It was so much fun. I like to shoot fast, because then you can get more looks.” She fell in love with one specifically: “The Giambattista Valli long floral dress, because it had pockets, which I loved. It was so elegant and beautiful and modest. It was sexy without having to show skin. We don’t see a lot of that these days. I didn’t feel like I had to be overexposed to feel beautiful and sexy.”
At house in Dubai, she will get an opportunity to vary out of her leggings and T-shirt uniform when associates come to go to, as they usually do. “[Hair-color guru] Tracey Cunningham comes here a lot,” Lohan says. “She does my hair and has been a very dear friend of mine for a very long time. She always loves to go to the Gold Souk, and to do touristy stuff. And we go bowling at this place, the Brass Monkey.” Lohan is an avid bowler; who knew? (She doesn’t personal her personal bowling sneakers but, however as we’re speaking, her publicist chimes in with a vow to purchase her a Chanel pair for Christmas.) “People also like to go to the Burj Khalifa [the world’s tallest building] to see the top,” Lohan says. She doesn’t be part of her friends, she says with amusing, however “I’ll drop them off!”
On the finish of the day, although, Lohan covets the second you come house, shut the door and take a deep breath. “I value just taking the time for the normalcy, and just being a mom, not having to go put makeup on every second to go to this or that event. We live in such a world of go, go, go, go, go, and that’s great,” she says. “But you need to have balance. I need longer times of balance, because I need time with my child. That’s really important to me. I’m a mom and a wife first, and then, you know, I have my other stuff.”
Photographer: Greg Swales; Editor: Serena French; Stylist: Anahita Moussavian; Picture Editor: Jessica Hober; Expertise Booker: Patty Adams Martinez; Hair: Danielle Priano; Make-up: Kristofer Buckle at Opus Magnificence; Manicure: Elle Gerstein at Opus Magnificence utilizing Voesh; Style Assistants: Jena Beck, Kristi Kruser, Meghan Powers; On-set Assistant: Tiana Schippa
