Whether you’re a millennial or just familiar with pop cultural history, you probably know that Lindsay Lohan — as well as scores of female-identifying celebrities at large — received severely outsized press scrutiny throughout the 2000s.
If we know it was bad, then it was obviously way worse to be the actual focus of said attention — and in a new interview with the Times, the actor said that the treatment she faced in the 2000s indeed has had some lingering effects.
“I don’t ever want my family to experience being chased by the paparazzi the way I was,” she said. “They were terrifying moments I had in my life — I have PTSD to the extreme from those things. The most invasive situations.”
“Really scary. And I pray stuff like that never comes back. It’s not safe. It’s not fair.”
Lindsay added that the type of press hysteria she faced “doesn’t happen as badly now,” and that it was “way worse” back in the 2000s — and, somewhat surprisingly, she’s thankful for the advent of social media by comparison.
“Now, because of social media, people can tell their own story in the way that you want it to be told,” she said. “It has reclaimed the ownership of your life. We didn’t have that and so, no, I don’t think anybody chose that life, but what I have learnt over time is how to separate my private life and public life, and that was difficult for me because nobody ever teaches you how to do that.”
However, Lindsay also said that living in public still has its drawbacks. “A lot of the time someone who is with me will notice someone filming,” she said. “I think I’ve lived with it for so long it doesn’t matter. But then, now, somebody will have a phone up all the time. That’s scary. That feels very uncomfortable. I’d rather someone just ask if they can take a photo or else you get cautious of every move you make.”
Read the entire interview here.
