Dead girl standing?

Lindsay Lohan8217;s Hollywood career is in jeopardy after a personal encounter with a tree

Up until this weekend8217;s latest escapade, bad girl Lindsay Lohan was scheduled to spend the summer appearing in a bonanza of high fashion ads and marketing blowouts, culminating in the horror flick, I Know Who Killed Me, featuring Lohan in the dual role of troubled stripper and high school teenager, or in her 21st birthday party extravaganza at Pure nightclub in Las Vegas on July 2-3. Just last week, she was bragging about the 500 guests scheduled to fly in for Lindsaypalooza.

And then came the Saturday morning tiff between her Mercedes and the bushes, which led to Lohan8217;s arrest on suspicion of drunken driving. Police have said that a substance believed to be cocaine was found. Since then it8217;s been hard to keep up with the gusher of sordid news and images circling the Internet8212;a series of photos showing Lohan appearing sacked out in a car around 4 a.m. an AA sobriety necklace hanging from the rear-view mirror and the report on TMZ.com Tuesday that she checked into Promises, rehab of the stars.

Now that she8217;s theoretically in line for a jail cell next to Paris Hilton8217;s, will the rats begin to scurry from the ship? Or is this a temporary blip in her celebrity?

Calls and e-mails to Lohan8217;s publicist, lawyer, and mother went unanswered, and her manager declined to comment.

Unlike fellow bad girls Hilton and Britney Spears, Lohan has high fashion credibility. Two weeks ago, the most ubiquitous photograph from a Chanel fashion show in LA had Lohan looking radiant alongside the icon Karl Lagerfeld. Last week, black-and-white glamour photos of a topless Lohan in a miniskirt amid rumpled sheets clutching a Jill Stuart patent leather satchel made the rounds on fashion news sites and blogs.

Ron Curtis, Jill Stuart8217;s husband and company8217;s president, said the new Lohan campaign is prominently featured in the window of their new East Hampton store. 8220;Before the incident, people were walking into our store saying, 8216;How could you put that girl in your ads, she8217;s awful?8217; Now, the same kinds of people are walking in and saying, 8216;Oh, look at her, she looks so beautiful. She8217;s never looked better.8217; It was bizarre.8221;

For two years, Lohan has been trying to rehab her Hollywood career, with seemingly savvy moves to ease from child actress into leading lady. She appeared with Meryl Streep in Robert Altman8217;s last film, A Prairie Home Companion, and recently as Jane Fonda8217;s troubled granddaughter in Georgia Rule, which is in theatres now. The movie has earned only 16 million thus far, a far cry from the kind of grosses Lohan sparked in her teen hits, Freaky Friday, which topped 110 million, and Mean Girls, at 86 million-plus.

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Several Hollywood players who8217;ve worked with her have expressed dismay that she has alienated her core audience, young girls, with her behaviour in the tabloids.

8220;She hasn8217;t been proprietary about her persona,8221; sighs one producer who knows her well. 8220;You don8217;t have to go to the movies to see Lindsay, you can go to the checkout stand to see her. When your personal life is bigger than what8217;s on screen, you8217;ve blown it as an actor.8221;
Rachel Abramowitz and Sheigh CrabtreeLAT-WP