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Being that Lindsay Lohan was the same age as Millie Bobby Brown when her career was reaching a zenith, it seems somewhat fitting (or at least cyclical) that both should have a movie out on Netflix at the same time. While the former’s “film” (a schlock-y Hallmark wannabe) is further proof that she made a career out of simply being “teenaged,” the latter’s proves that she has more enduring staying power. And, to be frank, more talent and acting range. Both qualities have been shown in the short length of her career, which is starting to expand more heavily into film with the end of Stranger Things on the horizon—Enola Holmes and Enola Holmes 2 being part of that steady segue.
And yes, Brown, like Lohan, seems to understand the value of clinging to the Netflix tit for work, even amid cries of the online film and TV giant “not being what it once was.” Sort of like Lohan herself, whose steady stream of hits only flowed when she was a youth, mainly as a result of sucking on Disney’s tit instead of Netflix’s (then still mailing out DVDs to subscribers). This included a succession of “feel-good” movies that started with The Parent Trap in 1998 and continued at the dawn of the 00s with Life-Size, Get A Clue, Freaky Friday and Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. All, of course, Disney-backed endeavors that complicated things when Lohan opted to embark upon the requisite Disney teen star “gone bad” route. Right around the time she decided to reteam with the juggernaut for the production of Herbie: Fully Loaded (after Paramount released Mean Girls in ’04).
A title that, obviously, left plenty of room for the tabloids to jestingly riff off of as Lohan was hospitalized for “exhaustion” and, oh yeah, an infected kidney. At the same time filming was going on, her partying (a.k.a. going out to clubs back when they were still bankable due to people actually being sentient, sexual creatures) was coming under more scrutiny. After all, she had just turned eighteen and was far more prone to wanting to sow the oats that being a highly-paid actress permitted (see: her being on the cover of a May ’04 Us Weekly with the headline, “Teens Gone Wild: Older men, all-night partying, extreme PDA…”). Plus, just as Britney and the Olsen twins before her, the obsession with Lohan “being legal” was part of the Nabokovian bread and butter that sold magazines in the late 90s and 00s. Lohan even appeared on an issue of Rolling Stone the year she turned eighteen with the headline, “Lindsay Lohan: Hot, Ready and Legal!”
In the decade when Millie Bobby Brown would come of age in her fame, the nascent #MeToo movement bubbled to the surface in 2017, when Brown was thirteen years old and one year into her stint as Eleven on Stranger Things. By 2020, the year of her sixteenth birthday (in addition to Miss Rona’s havoc), Brown had had enough of the overt sexualization of her body despite being a child. Something that Billie Eilish avoided full-stop by covering her own in baggy clothing that spoke to her being the twenty-first century ideal of a sexless pop star. Brown wasn’t exactly “flashing it” either, least of all à la Britney or even Lindsay—usually while they were out drinking and drugging to the tabloids’ (and TMZ’s) delight.
Brown did none of these things, and was not nearly as ridiculed or hounded as someone such as Lohan. Yet Brown grew up in an era where so much less is “tolerated.” Including the acceptance of men fetishizing underage girls in this way no longer being so “welcomed” by the media. Hence, the freedom of Brown being able to declare on her Instagram (a tool that 00s teen stars didn’t have the luxury to access), “There are moments I get frustrated from the inaccuracy, inappropriate comments, sexualization, and unnecessary insults that ultimately have resulted in pain and insecurity for me.”
On one level, somebody like Lohan would probably want to say, “Bitch, you don’t know from inaccuracy, inappropriate comments, sexualization or unnecessary insults.” On another, maybe Lohan can take comfort in having paved the way for subsequent teen stars to have far less of a hard time (all while narcissistically assuming it’s still “so hard”). Brown, too, wants to offer that courtesy to subsequent generations of famous teen girls, as made clear when she added to her sixteenth birthday comment, “I feel like change needs to happen for not only this generation but the next. Our world needs kindness and support in order for us children to grow and succeed.”
Alas, it appears as though the bullying nature of tabloid journalism (parading as newsworthy events) has only transferred with more unmitigated vengeance to the online landscape. The germinal example of this being Perez Hilton’s illustrious blog (that was, let’s be honest, far more deliciously cunty in the 00s). An entity that came full-circle when both Perez and Lindsay, at one of her many nadirs in 2012, decided to use one another to their respective advantage by cameo’ing on an episode of Glee called “Nationals.” And, speaking of gays, Brown’s closest brush with intense online bullying was when a series of memes attributing her with homophobic quotes that she never said bombarded her Twitter account. Then just fourteen, Brown decided to quit the medium (long before it was chic to do so in 2022). Lohan, simultaneously loving and hating celebrity, likely wouldn’t have “quit” being present in magazines had it even been an option.
Brown and Lohan’s divergence when it comes to romantic prudence is also markedly different. For while Lohan was dating Wilmer Valderrama—undoubtedly before she turned eighteen—a notorious player with a penchant for courting women with age gaps (though not to the same extent as Leonardo DiCaprio or Jake Gyllenhaal), Brown has kept it decidedly staid and age-appropriate with her current boyfriend, Jake Bongiovi (the spelling of which is somehow supposed to make us forget he’s Jon Bon Jovi’s son). Lohan’s mistake with her first high-profile romance at the apex of her career didn’t account for how Valderrama would, just a year after the breakup, describe, among other details to Howard Stern, that Lindsay was “a big fan of waxing.” So yeah, exactly the type of sleaze someone should be dating when they’re tabloid fodder already. That Brown is taken more seriously as an actress than Lohan ever was has also contributed to the “safe space” form of her celebrity. Less laughingstock, more tissue box stock (that’s a tear reference, not a cum one).
However, going back to the similarities between Lohan and Brown, the ages at which each actress was when they got their first major start also eerily align, for Brown was twelve when Stranger Things debuted, and so was Lohan when The Parent Trap arrived in theaters. What’s more, when Lohan was seventeen and eighteen, her two biggest movies came out—Freaky Friday (2003) and Mean Girls (2004), respectively. Brown has also released her two biggest movies (so far) around the same age, being sixteen when Enola Holmes came out and eighteen upon the arrival of Enola Holmes 2.
In noticeable contrast to Lohan, Brown’s future beyond teen stardom seems far brighter (more like Emma Watson’s post-Harry Potter…at least Serious Roles-wise). Not just because she has that arcane aura of “British dignity” (ironic considering how undignified that country is), but because she’s grown up in a generation that has proven itself to be the antithesis of millennial youth values: drinking and clubbing. To boot, Brown also has the advantage of “setting the record straight” on social media that no millennial star ever had.
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Genna Rivieccio
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