Lindsay Lohan's father has been jailed multiple times and battled addiction for years, something he passed on to his daughter too.
Every child hopes that their parents would care for and nurture them. They look up to their parents as the first role models to receive love and care instead of distrust and cynicism. However, for some people, their parents are the first nightmare they can't shake off.
Once a child and teenage star, Lindsay Lohan's life has come a long way. She was making $7.5 million for each movie once upon a time, says The Daily Beast, but now she can't even afford to hire a driver for herself when she's in LA. She started working at the age of three and by the time she was 18, she had been struggling with addiction issues, her father told The Sun UK. However, the worst thing about her struggle wasn't the addiction but her father who was ready to sell her out.
A disgraced Wall Street trader, Michael Lohan has faced the legal system multiple times and been jailed too. His erratic behavior once terrified wife Dina Lohan and their four children. His abusive and toxic influence is also likely to have caused Lindsay, The Parent Trap actress, pain and confusion over the years.
Both Lindsay and Dina have said that Michael was a horrible influence on their lives, according to Babygaga. He spent three years in prison from 1990 to 1993 for insider trading and then one more year in 1997 for violating probation. In 2004, he had a brush with the law again when he was charged with both attempted assault on Dina Lohan's brother, Matt Sullivan, and DUI. He has faced more arrests for which he spent two and a half years in prison and was released in 2007. It was also the year that Michael and Dina got divorced. He also had a secret child while he was married to her, as per ABC News.
But, that wasn't the end of Michael's run-ins with the law. In 2011, his then-girlfriend, Kate Major, sought a restraining order against him. It was later lifted in late 2012. The two had a child in 2013.
"He’s put myself and my mother and my mom’s parents through so much hell," Lindsay said in 2010, as per IOL. "From the death threats to throwing shoes at my grandfather’s head and giving him a concussion to threatening to kill my mother in front of my little brother Dakota... I grew up really fast just because of the situations I was subjected to because of my father. My mom would try to shield me from that as much as possible, but I chose to get in the middle of my parents the entire life."
According to both Lindsay and her mother Dina, Michael was a toxic influence in their lives. He was jailed for his misdeeds while Lindsay was growing up and even when he was home he would cause fights. Not only was he never there for the Mean Girls actress, but he also told the press about her personal struggles and profited from selling her out.
In 2013, he told the Sun UK, "Lindsay was filming in New Orleans and I got a call saying she had overdosed on cocaine. One of her assistants had given her the drug. I was so angry I got a gun from the house and planned to go to New Orleans to kill him. I couldn’t believe what had happened to my daughter. I was just so angry." His daughter contradicted this claim of his though.
The vices of the father have also become the vices of the daughter. The Just My Luck actress has had run-ins with the law multiple times, including a parole violation, and has addiction issues just like her father. However, Michael takes no mercy at his famous daughter and just continues to sell her pain.
She compared his character to that of "Jekyll and Hyde" during an interview with John Bishop: In Conversation With…"As a child, you recognize, in psychiatry it's a study, those moments become almost like a safe chaos and you just think it's normal, but it's not normal," Lindsay said, as per Digital Spy. "I remember saying to myself that moment when he ran out of my house, 'Thank God.' I was like, 'Oh my God, I'm not going to put myself through what my mother went through, no. This ends now.' My father was never physically abusive to my mother in front of me, I never saw that. Before I was born... I've seen those photos."
She further added that her parents' relationship is what influenced her to stay with her ex-fiancé billionaire Egor Tarabasov. They have been caught fighting publicly multiple times, as per Digital Spy. He had hurt her physically and she eventually left him.
"I realize now you can't stay in a relationship just for love. No woman can be hit and stay with that person if that person isn't prepared to say sorry. I've kept quiet for so long, but now I'm scared of what Egor might do to me and to himself," she told the Daily Mail.
References:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/lindsay-lohans-dad-michael-lohan-and-their-twisted-relationship
https://www.babygaga.com/15-celeb-parents-who-abandoned-their-kids/
https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/inside-lohan-family-struggles/story?id=20250507
