Actress teen pop star Lindsay Lohan entered the world of show business at the tender age of three as a Ford model, which led to television commercials for the Gap, Pizza Hut, and Wendy's. She did more television work as she grew up, including stints on soap operas like Another World and The Guiding Light, as well as roles in The Bette Show and Get a Clue, a Disney Channel movie. Lohan's Disney connection, which included starring as the twins in a remake of The Parent Trap, continued into her teens and helped her expand her career into music: along with co-starring with Jamie Lee Curtis in 2003's Freaky Friday, she also performed the movie's theme song, "Ultimate."
The following year, Lohan starred in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen and contributed two songs to its soundtrack. Buoyed by these successes as well as her starring role in Mean Girls, Lohan hosted the 2004 MTV Movie Awards and won an award for Female Breakout Star. She also signed to Tommy Mottola's Casablanca Records, releasing her debut album, Speak, in December of 2004. The next year saw celebrity start to catch up with Lohan. While she continued her relationship with Disney, filming a remake of Herbie: Fully Loaded, Internet and tabloid rumors spread about everything from her health and love life (she's dating Wilmer, she isn't dating Wilmer....) to her late-night party habits and diva behavior. It didn't help that Speak was less than a success.
By the end of 2005 Lohan's persona as the wild and damaged teen siren -- whatever its ratio of truth to fiction -- had outshone her accomplishments as an actress and a singer. And it was into this caustic tabloid climate that she released her second album, A Little More Personal (Raw). Though the album was critically panned, it was certified gold early in 2006. Later that year, Lohan was switched from Casablanca to Motown Records by Universal Music Group. Though she focused more on her film career in 2006 and 2007 and continued to have a swirl of tabloid attention and media controversy around her -- including her arrest on May 26, 2007, for suspicion of driving under the influence and a subsequent stay at Malibu, CA's Promises Treatment Center -- Lohan planned work on a third album in the second half of 2007.
On July 24, 2007, Lohan—in the wake of her second DUI arrest—withdrew from a scheduled appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to promote her starring role as a stripper in the thriller-mystery film I Know Who Killed Me. Lohan plays a young woman who appears to suffer from split personalities after being rescued from a serial killer. The film premiered "to an abysmal $3.5 million" and made $9,595,945 at the box office worldwide. and earned Lohan two nominations for worst actress at the Golden Raspberry Awards. She came in first and second, tying with herself.
In May 2008, Lohan appeared on ABC's Ugly Betty television series, her first screen appearance since I Know Who Killed Me. Subsequently guest starring in a total of four episodes, spanning seasons two and three in 2008, Lohan played Kimmie Keegan, an old schoolmate of America Ferrera's character Betty Suarez.
Lohan's latest film project, Labor Pains, in which she plays a young woman who pretends to be pregnant to avoid being fired, is not being released to theaters in spring 2009 as originally planned. Instead, it will appear as a TV movie on the ABC Family cable channel in July 2009 and be released on DVD a month later. It was announced in May 2009 that Lohan has landed the lead role in the upcoming 2010 film The Other Side, alongside Jason Lee, Woody Harrelson, Alanis Morissette and Eddie Izzard. She will star as a grad student who discovers a mystery involving the strange residents of a remote island. She is also set to appear in Dare to Love Me which is also slated for a 2010 release.