Lindsay Lohan Looks Back on Troubled Teen Years: “Why Didn’t Anyone Protect Me More?”

As Lindsay Lohan has mounted an impressive Hollywood comeback and reinvented herself as a wife, mother and Dubai resident, the Freaky Friday star has only cautiously and carefully talked about her troubled teen years that led to a troubled adulthood filled with arrests and legal troubles.

But in the new March 2026 issue of Vogue Arabia, the 39-year-old opens up to writer Christine Van Deemter about why the early days were so tumultuous as she wonders, “Why didn’t anyone just go and take me out of there, protect me more?” she said. “You don’t know how to do that yourself when you’re a teenager.”

After breaking out in 1998’s The Parent Trap as a kid, Lohan really hit it big with 2003’s Freaky Friday opposite Jamie Lee Curtis. Still a teenager, she moved to Los Angeles where she lived without parental supervision and, for a time, shared an apartment with fellow teen star Raven-Symoné. Her career continued to skyrocket with roles in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, Mean Girls and Herbie: Fully Loaded along with a burgeoning music career. But at the same time, she became a tabloid target for wild nights spent at Hollywood clubs that later led to arrests and legal woes.

“It was all so overwhelming and consuming,” she told Vogue Arabia of the time. “I should have listened to my mom and dad and moved back to New York. But I was young and wanted to be in L.A. And I didn’t know. So yeah, while a lot of it was fun, it was hard when I was young. It was a double-edged sword.”

She also explains why she stepped away and ultimately found herself living far from the glare of Hollywood. “I wasn’t having fun in the business anymore,” she said. “I wasn’t finding roles I loved. It’s not a life I wanted to live, you know? It’s not a real life. It pushed me so far away that I moved to the other side of the world. And I’m so glad I followed my gut.”

Lohan ultimately moved to Dubai in 2014. It’s where she met her husband, Bader Shammas, and welcomed their son, Luai. “We’re so good together because he’s so calm and I’m like a firecracker. We have a great balance,” she explained. “Being in Dubai is very grounding. I get to just spend time with my family. The city gives me a sense of being with what’s most important.”

She continues to work, and is next poised to star in the Hulu miniseries Count My Lies opposite Shailene Woodley and Kit Harington. “With age comes a different kind of confidence. When I was younger, I wasn’t so comfortable saying how I felt about a character and being involved with the process of it. And I love that part now.”

The full interview is available now on Vogue Arabia’s website.