@ The Movies Interview: Lindsay Lohan
Teen Star Rocks With 'Freaky Friday' Remake
Tim Lammers, Web Staff EditorUpdated: 1:56 p.m. EDT August 4, 2003
After seeing "Freaky Friday" recently, I thought to myself how difficult it must have been for Jamie Lee Curtis to play a teenager. After all, with all the hustle and bustle of being an adult, it's easy to forget what it's like to be a high school teenager.
"But at least she's been one -- I haven't yet," quipped Lindsay Lohan, Curtis' co-star in the new mother-daughter comedy "Freaky Friday."
Good point, Lindsay. Seems like I've forgotten even more.
In the film, a mystical incident finds the feisty duo of 15-year-old Annabell (Lohan) and her mother, Tess, (Curtis) suddenly occupying each other's bodies as a lesson to appreciate one-another's conflicting points of view.
The film is based, of course, on the film of the same name, which starred Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster as the mother and daughter who couldn't see eye to eye.
To help Lohan and Curtis see through the eyes of their alternate characters for this "Freaky Friday" was director Mark Waters, who added a nice wrinkle to the rehearsal process: he taped both Lohan and Curtis reading through the entire script as if the characters never switched bodies.
Lohan, who just turned 17, told me in a recent @ The Movies interview that the tapes proved to be a great point of reference for her and Curtis when it finally came to playing each other for real.
"That helped me a lot because I was able to see what she did when she was her character," Lohan said. "It showed expressions that she made and helped me get the gist of how I should play her character before we started."
When it finally came to see Curtis playing her, Lohan realized something interesting: there were facial expressions and other little quirks that she was otherwise oblivious to.
"There are these little eye things that I do that she did as me," Lohan said. Plus, my character yells a lot and does a lot of whining. It was funny to see Jamie do that."
This isn't Lohan's first foray into the world of Disney family classics. She previously stepped into the shoes (times two) to play the twin roles made famous by Hayley Mills in "The Parent Trap." And while "Freaky Friday," like "The Parent Trap," was updated to give it more of a contemporary feel, Lohan still approached the Mills and Foster roles gingerly.
"It's nerve-wracking because you want to live up to what they've done, and you feel like you're going to be compared to them," Lohan explained. "So I decided to go for my own thing. It was a fresh start making this movie, and that's how we wanted to keep it -- with no pressure."
That's not to say that Lohan's completely leaving the legacies of the classic "Parent Trap" and "Freaky Friday" behind. She's proud to be a part of a new Disney tradition, and part of that tradition, is to ensure that the new films maintain that sense of joy the original films brought to people.
"You can remake these movies because they are fun family films," Lohan said. "It's so much fun to make a film parents know already, because they can see it, too. Being able to remake these films is so important to kids my age. I think it's so important to get whole families into the movie theaters instead of just the teens."
Lohan Rocks Out
It's unusual for most working actors to get a lead role in a film, let alone sing in one. But Lohan got both chances for "Freaky Friday" and then some. She fulfilled another dream by learning how to play guitar for the film, since her garage band's performances are pivotal to story.
And, she wants you to know, it wasn't movie magic that makes her look like she's jamming on screen: that's her really playing the riffs.
"That was a motive for me to learn how to play," Lohan said. "It's just so much fun for me -- I was just so honored to sing and play guitar in the movie. It was awesome that they even let me do it!"
In the film, Lohan sings lead on the song "Ultimate," and the music video of the tune has been in heavy rotation on Disney's cable channels. The exposure of her vocal talents can only help, since she's working with Gloria Estefan's husband/producer, Emilio, on getting a record deal.
"I've been working with him on some demos, and I'm going to be meeting with some labels soon," Lohan said. "Hopefully things will work out with my singing."
Until then, Lohan can always rely on her musical sensibilities to aid her in her acting career. It obviously helped in "Freaky Friday" because she's playing a musician, but she says, too, that having a musical background can help define the attitude of a character.
"You can go by what the character listens to to get in certain moods -- that always helps," Lohan explained. "For this role, I listened to more punk rock."
Lohan wants you to understand, though, that she's not the rowdy person that she's playing on screen. Well, not most of the time, anyway.
"I have my rebel side," Lohan goofed. "But I'm a good girl, too."
One part of the "good" side of Lohan is to devote time to charity work. She details her involvement in such charities as Dream Come True (for terminally ill children), The Festival of Trees for The United Cerebral Palsy Association and the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Foundation on her official Web site, llrocks.com.
"I just think giving back is important and I'm in the position where I can help people and make other people happy," Lohan said. "Why not take advantage of that instead of something else that's unnecessary to take advantage of?"
Appropriately, Lohan teamed with Curtis in dedicating time to a special project as a result of their work together on "Freaky Friday."
"We're been doing charity work with TeenLine for this movie because it's geared towards teens," Lohan explained. "If kids have any problems, they can call into TeenLine and tell them what their problems are, and we help find ways to solve them."
While there's no question that "Freaky Friday" is first meant to entertain audiences, Lohan hopes people will walk away from it feeling informed, too.
"I hope that kids can respect what their parents do more, and I hope that adults can understand why their kids get so stressed out," Lohan said. "And they do have a whole lot of stress with going to school and dealing with peer pressure and other kids in school."
Lohan meanwhile is staying in the teen mode for her next movie role, another comedy with a rock 'n' roll twist called "Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen."
Keep rockin', Lindsay.
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