Paris isn't the only party animal destroying herself

[Mandy]

Paris isn't the only party animal destroying herself

From http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2802626.ece

Career crisis for Lohan and Spears after new disgraces
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Published: 26 July 2007

Two of Hollywood's notoriously hard-living bad girls have crashed and burned once again, this time raising questions whether their careers will ever recover.

Lindsay Lohan, the 21-year-old star of Freaky Friday, Mean Girls and other teenage comedies, faced her second drink-driving conviction in three months yesterday after she was arrested behind the wheel with a suspended licence, too much booze in her system and an undisclosed quantity of cocaine in her car.

Britney Spears, the one-time heartthrob singer turned mess of a single mother at the ripe age of 25, was meanwhile reported to have fled a photo shoot for OK! Magazine - still wearing almost $15,000 (£7,500) in borrowed clothing - after several minutes of embarrassingly weird behaviour in front of the camera.

It was Lohan who grabbed most of the headlines yesterday after she was pulled over in a car park in the beach town of Santa Monica in the early hours of Tuesday morning. She was eventually released on bail but can expect rough treatment from the judge when she returns to court on 24 August.

She completed her second rehab stint of the year just two weeks ago and was wearing an alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelet at the time of her arrest. Already last week, she raised eyebrows - and provoked heart palpitations in the producers of the movie she was about to begin shooting - when she showed up at a Las Vegas nightclub.

In the wake of her arrest, her lawyer, Blair Berk issued a statement acknowledging that she had "relapsed" several hours before her arrest. "Addiction is a terrible and vicious disease," he said. "The bracelet has now been removed. She is safe, out of custody and presently receiving medical care."

Lohan herself, meanwhile, shot off an email to the television gossip show Access Hollywood indicating her intention to plead not guilty to at least some of the charges. "I am innocent," she wrote. "[I] did not do drugs, they're not mine."

The events leading up to Tuesday's arrest appear to be connected to Lohan's decision to fire her personal assistant the day before. Police said it was the dismissed assistant's mother who called them, saying she was being pursued by the actress. Lohan countered in her email: "I was almost hit by my assistant Tarin's mom. I appreciate everyone giving me my privacy."

The arrest caused immediate difficulties for two projects involving Lohan. The producers of the first, I Know Who Killed Me, a low-budget film due for release later this week, were scrambling yesterday to refocus their marketing campaign away from Lohan. A scheduled appearance on Jay Leno's late-night chat show was abruptly cancelled, and the producers were also considering re-editing the trailers, which feature Lohan in almost every frame.

The second project was another independent film called Poor Things, co-starring Shirley MacLaine and Olympia Dukakis.

The start date for Poor Things has already been postponed once, to allow time for Lohan to complete rehabilitation at the swanky Promises clinic in Malibu. The director and fellow actors visited her there several times to rehearse their parts together.

Lohan's role may now have to be recast - not only because she risks being sent to prison next month, but also because she may now be uninsurable as an actress, much as Robert Downey Jr was for a period at the height of his own problems with drug and alcohol addiction.

Lohan's fellow party animal Spears, meanwhile, was not in legal trouble, mainly because OK! Magazine agreed to pick up the bill for $21,000 in lost and damaged goods from her photo shoot. During the shoot, intended to be an attempt to relaunch Spears' floundering career, the singer wiped her grease-stained hands on a designer gown, let her puppy defecat on a $6,700 Zac Posen dress and rushed several times to the toilet, leaving the door open and sometimes taking her assistant in with her.

OK!, which rarely tattles about celebrities behaving badly on its watch, said it would not publish the photos it had taken of Spears for legal reasons. But it also reported that Spears' ex, Kevin Federline, was now considering suing for sole custody of the couple's two young children.

[faceless]

I feel sorry for them both in a way. They've been used by producers to make millions and then left to rot.

[Mandy]

[Mandy]

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