Diva tantrums, suspected drug overdoses, a headline-grabbing car crash and endless late arrivals on set after long nights of hard partying. It could be a page ripped straight from the script of Liz & Dick, a new Hollywood film about the tempestuous relationship between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
Instead, according to producer Larry Thompson, it sums up working with Lindsay Lohan, the troubled starlet playing Taylor in the £2.1 million (Dh12.2 million) movie.
“There were times it felt surreal,” the 68-year-old Tinseltown veteran said on Saturday night. “I’d go on to the set and it was art imitating life imitating art. Lindsay was never on time and, of course, there was drama on a daily basis.
“I’ve made dozens of films in my time but this is the first occasion I’ve had to take out ‘incarceration insurance’. I didn’t know such a thing existed. But when you are working with Lindsay you need insurance to cover everything. I got it through Lloyd’s of London and it cost a fortune — $250,000 for a 21-day shoot.
“By the time Lindsay finally walked out on set I thought the worst was over. But it had just begun. To say she is difficult is an understatement. Working with Lindsay is not for the faint of heart. I turned 50 shades of white during the production.”
For Lindsay, 26, a former child star just as Taylor was, the role is a final attempt to rehabilitate her image in Hollywood. But members of Taylor’s family have already condemned the film and Lohan’s casting in it. The actress, who shot to fame in the 2004 blockbuster Mean Girls, is now more famous for her drunken off-screen antics than for her unquestionable on-screen talent.
She had spent repeated stints in rehab for drugs and drink addiction and endured endless court appearances. Mixed with lurid tabloid headlines referring to her lesbian love affairs, car crashes, alleged thefts of jewellery and furs and a dysfunctional family life — her father Michael recently admitted paternity of a 15-year-old love child — she was ‘virtually unemployable’, according to one studio insider.
“She’s the ultimate Hollywood train wreck,” said the source. “Everyone remembers her as this fresh-faced gorgeous girl, but she’s thrown it all away and has no one to blame but herself. But America loves a comeback story and this is Lindsay’s last chance.”
The film airs on America’s Lifetime channel next week and in Britain at the end of this year — Thompson is in ‘final negotiations’ to sell the project to an as-yet unidentified UK broadcaster.
Speaking after the premiere of the film, in her first interview about the role, a husky-voiced Lohan, wearing a simple light blue dress and matching shoes, said: “I learn from my mistakes. People grow and change. You have life experiences, and I’ve had some very traumatic ones, very serious ones.
“You draw from experiences, that’s where I am right now. I’m drawing from the things I’ve seen and grown up with. I don’t want to go back.”
Lohan recently hired a heavyweight PR team (Rogers & Cowan, who represent Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr) to rehabilitate her image. Reporters at the after-screening question-and-answer session were carefully vetted. The actress backed out of a scheduled interview with Barbara Walters, a seasoned reporter famed for asking tough questions, in favour of a ‘light-hearted’ carefully scripted appearance on the Jay Leno talk show.
Lohan, who is estranged from her father, spoke of the similarities between her relationship with her mother Dina (who herself was forced to deny she has a cocaine addiction after a recent ‘hyper’ TV appearance) and British-born Elizabeth Taylor’s with her mother Sara Taylor.
Bond
Lohan said: “There’s a certain bond that a mother and daughter create, especially when there’s not a fatherly figure in your life. In the film, the mother doesn’t want to see her daughter hurt. She didn’t want that for Elizabeth and my mum never wanted that for me.
“Elizabeth and I are both very strong-willed. That’s a similarity my mother had to deal with. It’s hard for her to tell me what to do and what not to do. There’s only so much a parent can do. You have to learn it yourself.
“I really related to Elizabeth in a lot of different aspects because of her position in the public eye and the media obsession with her — her ups and downs in relationships — and her love of diamonds.
“She was an incredible woman…what she did for people with Aids. She really had her heart and soul into people. I related to her because there are things you experience when you reach a certain point of fame where people are afraid to say no to you.
“I think that has a lot to do with living in excess. I was there at one point because I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t take the time to listen.”
Producer Thompson says he auditioned other actresses — including Transformers star Megan Fox — but knew Lohan would be a “perfect but dangerous” choice.
He met the real Taylor — who died last year, aged 79 — in her magnificent Bel Air mansion when they were discussing a theatre project in the early nineties. “I walked into her living room to discuss a theatre company she was involved with. At the time, I represented a client her company wanted to hire for a Broadway show,” he recalls.
“Of course, she kept me waiting and waiting …The room was all white — white walls, white sofa, white fur rug — except for a huge bunch of violet flowers on the coffee table.
“I sat in a chair and finally Elizabeth wafted in, nearly an hour late, and draped herself on the sofa opposite me so that I had to look over the violet flowers into her violet eyes. Everything was a production with Elizabeth.
Strong actress
“When you are making a movie about a character as larger than life as Elizabeth, you need an equally strong actress. Lindsay lobbied hard for the role. I saw other actors but I kept getting emails and phone calls from her pitching for the part.
“Even though I knew she would be difficult, I also knew she would be able to carry this off and make her Elizabeth convincing. I took a big risk and I believe it’s paid off. I had to bring something big to this movie and Lindsay was it. She brought the drama, the diva attitude.
“She has so much in common with Elizabeth — they were both child stars, they both lived lives of excess, they both were hounded and hunted by the paparazzi, they lived in a bubble and both she and Elizabeth Taylor had well-publicised addictions.
“Lindsay has lived that life and understands that. Yet, making the right decision is often easier than living with the right decision. It was hell at times but we got magic in the can.”
In a town where no one ever tells the truth about their co-workers, Thompson’s honestly about the perils of working with Lohan is refreshing.
A showbusiness stalwart, he earned his reputation (and fortune) in the lucrative world of made-for-TV movies, making more than 25 films including dramas based on the lives of Edward and Mrs Simpson and Sonny and Cher. He is also a manager, representing Joan Rivers, David Hasselhoff and Star Trek’s William Shatner.
Asked if Lohan’s diva demands ever became too much, he sighs and replies: ‘As executive producer and owner of the movie, I had to stay focused on making the movie happen.
“I had a lot of my own money tied up in the project. I couldn’t afford, midway through the shoot, to get totally confrontational with someone I needed pretty much every moment on screen.
“Therefore, during the very difficult days of production, I had to be sensitive to her, yet protective of my movie. I walked a careful line. There were times — like when she crashed her Porsche on the way to the set on the fourth day — when I was climbing up the wall. It aged me.
“Mickey Rooney once said he was 6ft 1in before he met Ava Gardner and I know exactly how he felt. Lindsay is someone who will bring you to your knees.”
Did she ever make it to the set on time? “No, of course not,” he says with a chuckle. “We anticipated some of her tardiness — but not all of it.”
Thompson was forced to call emergency services to break down the door of his star’s penthouse hotel room after she failed to show for work one day. Paramedics found her passed out in bed. Her then-spokesman released a statement saying she had been suffering from “exhaustion”, a popular euphemism in Hollywood for a range of ailments usually involving late nights.
Thompson was also forced to smooth over a small matter involving a £30,000 unpaid hotel bill at the famed Chateau Marmont on LA’s Sunset Strip where the former Disney child star stayed throughout the shoot and ran up a hefty tab, including £2,500 in mini-bar fees. She claimed the production team had promised to cover her bill — something Thompson denies.
He says simply: “She sorely tested me at times, she sure did. But the end product is worth it. When people see Lindsay as Elizabeth, they will forget all the scandals and dramas and remember what a fine actress Lindsay is.”
Thompson says the 88-minute film, which co-stars New Zealand actor Grant Bowler as Burton, “is a big, sweeping, international film. It covers the couple’s relationship from first meeting to their marriage in 1964, divorce in 1974, remarriage in 1975 and separation a year later.
“It goes from Rome, where they fall in love on the set of Cleopatra, to Switzerland and Monte Carlo, Rome again and Budapest. The film is big and loud and bawdy, like Elizabeth and Lindsay.”
Ironically, the Burton-Taylor romance helped to create the modern paparazzi which has chronicled the ups and downs of Lohan’s descent in gory detail.
Thompson says: “They were the Brangelina of their day. We were shooting on the boat and we hired paparazzi for the movie. Then the real paparazzi started coming across the harbour with long lenses.
“It was surreal. But when you are dealing with Elizabeth and Lindsay, everything becomes surreal.”
Regardless of public reaction to the film, Taylor’s own family is said to be “incensed” by the casting choice.
Taylor’s long-time friend, photographer Firooz Zahedi compared the casting of Lohan as Taylor as “like trying to sell used toilet paper as a silk handkerchief.”
On Saturday night, Taylor’s daughter Liza Todd-Tivey, a sculptor who lives quietly in upstate New York, said: “Will I watch it? Definitely not.”
The actress’s son Christopher Wilding added: “We’re a very private family. We don’t give interviews. But I won’t be watching it. No, never.”
Of the family’s objections, producer Thompson says: “It’s very difficult for the family to be objective. I hope when they see the film, they will realise it was done with love and a lot of respect.
“Lindsay put her heart and soul into this. I believe she will be able to reinvent herself, just as Elizabeth did so many times in her own life.|”
For the sake of Lohan’s career, one can only hope that proves to be the case.
Instead, according to producer Larry Thompson, it sums up working with Lindsay Lohan, the troubled starlet playing Taylor in the £2.1 million (Dh12.2 million) movie.
“There were times it felt surreal,” the 68-year-old Tinseltown veteran said on Saturday night. “I’d go on to the set and it was art imitating life imitating art. Lindsay was never on time and, of course, there was drama on a daily basis.
“I’ve made dozens of films in my time but this is the first occasion I’ve had to take out ‘incarceration insurance’. I didn’t know such a thing existed. But when you are working with Lindsay you need insurance to cover everything. I got it through Lloyd’s of London and it cost a fortune — $250,000 for a 21-day shoot.
“By the time Lindsay finally walked out on set I thought the worst was over. But it had just begun. To say she is difficult is an understatement. Working with Lindsay is not for the faint of heart. I turned 50 shades of white during the production.”
For Lindsay, 26, a former child star just as Taylor was, the role is a final attempt to rehabilitate her image in Hollywood. But members of Taylor’s family have already condemned the film and Lohan’s casting in it. The actress, who shot to fame in the 2004 blockbuster Mean Girls, is now more famous for her drunken off-screen antics than for her unquestionable on-screen talent.
She had spent repeated stints in rehab for drugs and drink addiction and endured endless court appearances. Mixed with lurid tabloid headlines referring to her lesbian love affairs, car crashes, alleged thefts of jewellery and furs and a dysfunctional family life — her father Michael recently admitted paternity of a 15-year-old love child — she was ‘virtually unemployable’, according to one studio insider.
“She’s the ultimate Hollywood train wreck,” said the source. “Everyone remembers her as this fresh-faced gorgeous girl, but she’s thrown it all away and has no one to blame but herself. But America loves a comeback story and this is Lindsay’s last chance.”
The film airs on America’s Lifetime channel next week and in Britain at the end of this year — Thompson is in ‘final negotiations’ to sell the project to an as-yet unidentified UK broadcaster.
Speaking after the premiere of the film, in her first interview about the role, a husky-voiced Lohan, wearing a simple light blue dress and matching shoes, said: “I learn from my mistakes. People grow and change. You have life experiences, and I’ve had some very traumatic ones, very serious ones.
“You draw from experiences, that’s where I am right now. I’m drawing from the things I’ve seen and grown up with. I don’t want to go back.”
Lohan recently hired a heavyweight PR team (Rogers & Cowan, who represent Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr) to rehabilitate her image. Reporters at the after-screening question-and-answer session were carefully vetted. The actress backed out of a scheduled interview with Barbara Walters, a seasoned reporter famed for asking tough questions, in favour of a ‘light-hearted’ carefully scripted appearance on the Jay Leno talk show.
Lohan, who is estranged from her father, spoke of the similarities between her relationship with her mother Dina (who herself was forced to deny she has a cocaine addiction after a recent ‘hyper’ TV appearance) and British-born Elizabeth Taylor’s with her mother Sara Taylor.
Bond
Lohan said: “There’s a certain bond that a mother and daughter create, especially when there’s not a fatherly figure in your life. In the film, the mother doesn’t want to see her daughter hurt. She didn’t want that for Elizabeth and my mum never wanted that for me.
“Elizabeth and I are both very strong-willed. That’s a similarity my mother had to deal with. It’s hard for her to tell me what to do and what not to do. There’s only so much a parent can do. You have to learn it yourself.
“I really related to Elizabeth in a lot of different aspects because of her position in the public eye and the media obsession with her — her ups and downs in relationships — and her love of diamonds.
“She was an incredible woman…what she did for people with Aids. She really had her heart and soul into people. I related to her because there are things you experience when you reach a certain point of fame where people are afraid to say no to you.
“I think that has a lot to do with living in excess. I was there at one point because I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t take the time to listen.”
Producer Thompson says he auditioned other actresses — including Transformers star Megan Fox — but knew Lohan would be a “perfect but dangerous” choice.
He met the real Taylor — who died last year, aged 79 — in her magnificent Bel Air mansion when they were discussing a theatre project in the early nineties. “I walked into her living room to discuss a theatre company she was involved with. At the time, I represented a client her company wanted to hire for a Broadway show,” he recalls.
“Of course, she kept me waiting and waiting …The room was all white — white walls, white sofa, white fur rug — except for a huge bunch of violet flowers on the coffee table.
“I sat in a chair and finally Elizabeth wafted in, nearly an hour late, and draped herself on the sofa opposite me so that I had to look over the violet flowers into her violet eyes. Everything was a production with Elizabeth.
Strong actress
“When you are making a movie about a character as larger than life as Elizabeth, you need an equally strong actress. Lindsay lobbied hard for the role. I saw other actors but I kept getting emails and phone calls from her pitching for the part.
“Even though I knew she would be difficult, I also knew she would be able to carry this off and make her Elizabeth convincing. I took a big risk and I believe it’s paid off. I had to bring something big to this movie and Lindsay was it. She brought the drama, the diva attitude.
“She has so much in common with Elizabeth — they were both child stars, they both lived lives of excess, they both were hounded and hunted by the paparazzi, they lived in a bubble and both she and Elizabeth Taylor had well-publicised addictions.
“Lindsay has lived that life and understands that. Yet, making the right decision is often easier than living with the right decision. It was hell at times but we got magic in the can.”
In a town where no one ever tells the truth about their co-workers, Thompson’s honestly about the perils of working with Lohan is refreshing.
A showbusiness stalwart, he earned his reputation (and fortune) in the lucrative world of made-for-TV movies, making more than 25 films including dramas based on the lives of Edward and Mrs Simpson and Sonny and Cher. He is also a manager, representing Joan Rivers, David Hasselhoff and Star Trek’s William Shatner.
Asked if Lohan’s diva demands ever became too much, he sighs and replies: ‘As executive producer and owner of the movie, I had to stay focused on making the movie happen.
“I had a lot of my own money tied up in the project. I couldn’t afford, midway through the shoot, to get totally confrontational with someone I needed pretty much every moment on screen.
“Therefore, during the very difficult days of production, I had to be sensitive to her, yet protective of my movie. I walked a careful line. There were times — like when she crashed her Porsche on the way to the set on the fourth day — when I was climbing up the wall. It aged me.
“Mickey Rooney once said he was 6ft 1in before he met Ava Gardner and I know exactly how he felt. Lindsay is someone who will bring you to your knees.”
Did she ever make it to the set on time? “No, of course not,” he says with a chuckle. “We anticipated some of her tardiness — but not all of it.”
Thompson was forced to call emergency services to break down the door of his star’s penthouse hotel room after she failed to show for work one day. Paramedics found her passed out in bed. Her then-spokesman released a statement saying she had been suffering from “exhaustion”, a popular euphemism in Hollywood for a range of ailments usually involving late nights.
Thompson was also forced to smooth over a small matter involving a £30,000 unpaid hotel bill at the famed Chateau Marmont on LA’s Sunset Strip where the former Disney child star stayed throughout the shoot and ran up a hefty tab, including £2,500 in mini-bar fees. She claimed the production team had promised to cover her bill — something Thompson denies.
He says simply: “She sorely tested me at times, she sure did. But the end product is worth it. When people see Lindsay as Elizabeth, they will forget all the scandals and dramas and remember what a fine actress Lindsay is.”
Thompson says the 88-minute film, which co-stars New Zealand actor Grant Bowler as Burton, “is a big, sweeping, international film. It covers the couple’s relationship from first meeting to their marriage in 1964, divorce in 1974, remarriage in 1975 and separation a year later.
“It goes from Rome, where they fall in love on the set of Cleopatra, to Switzerland and Monte Carlo, Rome again and Budapest. The film is big and loud and bawdy, like Elizabeth and Lindsay.”
Ironically, the Burton-Taylor romance helped to create the modern paparazzi which has chronicled the ups and downs of Lohan’s descent in gory detail.
Thompson says: “They were the Brangelina of their day. We were shooting on the boat and we hired paparazzi for the movie. Then the real paparazzi started coming across the harbour with long lenses.
“It was surreal. But when you are dealing with Elizabeth and Lindsay, everything becomes surreal.”
Regardless of public reaction to the film, Taylor’s own family is said to be “incensed” by the casting choice.
Taylor’s long-time friend, photographer Firooz Zahedi compared the casting of Lohan as Taylor as “like trying to sell used toilet paper as a silk handkerchief.”
On Saturday night, Taylor’s daughter Liza Todd-Tivey, a sculptor who lives quietly in upstate New York, said: “Will I watch it? Definitely not.”
The actress’s son Christopher Wilding added: “We’re a very private family. We don’t give interviews. But I won’t be watching it. No, never.”
Of the family’s objections, producer Thompson says: “It’s very difficult for the family to be objective. I hope when they see the film, they will realise it was done with love and a lot of respect.
“Lindsay put her heart and soul into this. I believe she will be able to reinvent herself, just as Elizabeth did so many times in her own life.|”
For the sake of Lohan’s career, one can only hope that proves to be the case.
