Lindsay Lohan’s mother blamed her daughter’s jail term on a judge who “played hardball” and defended the troubled star on Friday, but said she would retreat from Hollywood after finishing a stint in rehab to move back to New York.
Dina Lohan told US morning talk show NBC’s Today she didn’t think her 24 year-old daughter deserved jail time — “not for this particular offense,” she said.
“She’s been through a lot. The judge played hardball. Lindsay was in with alleged murderers and she’s become friends with a lot of them. Lindsay rolled with the punches and she’s doing wonderfully,” she told Matt Lauer in an interview involving several terse exchanges.
Lohan is currently in a 90-day drug and alcohol rehabilitation program at the University of California Los Angeles after having served 13 days behind bars for violating her probation in a pair of drunken driving cases in 2007.
The California judge who sent Lohan to jail removed herself last week from the actress’s drunken driving probation proceedings, following complaints she had improper conversations about the case.
Dina Lohan said her daughter was now a changed person, had “grown up considerably” and would be moving to New York when she left rehab, which she expected to come sooner than the allotted time.
“She will be coming back to New York,” she said. “Los Angeles is a little ... It’s a different game you play there, the court system is a little different.”
She disagreed that she and her estranged ex-husband Michael Lohan — who admitted to CBS’ The Early Show on Friday he had “made my mistakes” — had not done enough to turn the young actress’ life around.
“I had to let her go and let her live and fall and fail and survive. Without failure, there’s no success,” she said. “I was there in close proximity, but you can’t make your child not go out and go to a club and not get behind the wheel of a car. I certainly don’t condone any of that behavior.”
The troubled actress rose to fame in Disney movies like Freaky Friday and enjoyed hits such as Mean Girls but began to see her career fall apart as Hollywood’s nightlife caught up with her.
In 2007, she was arrested for drunken driving and cocaine possession and served 84 minutes in jail along with being put on probation.
Last month, Lohan was sentenced to 90 days in jail and another 90 days in rehab for missing alcohol education classes imposed as part of her probation on the 2007 charges. Her prison sentence was cut to 13 days because of overcrowding.
Another California inmate, Aretha Wilson, accused of attacking Leonardo DiCaprio with a broken bottle at a Hollywood party in 2005, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to assault with a deadly weapon.
She is expected to return to court Aug. 23 for a preliminary hearing. Wilson, 40, who fled to Canada and was extradited to the US to face the charge, remains in a California jail.
DiCaprio, star of current hit movie Inception, suffered “great bodily injury’” when Wilson attacked him with a broken beer bottle, according to an arrest warrant.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Hilleri G. Merritt previously issued a protective order requiring Wilson to stay at least 500 yards (457m) away from the actor and two witnesses to the alleged attack.
Also in California, Zsa Zsa Gabor’s publicist says the actress returned to a Los Angeles hospital because she experienced complications while recuperating from a broken hip.
Publicist John Blanchette says an ambulance took Gabor from her home to an emergency room on Friday afternoon.
Blanchette says Gabor’s husband told him that the 93-year-old actress is bleeding and in a lot of pain.
He says she was diagnosed with a blood clot and will be treated at the hospital for the next several days.
Gabor broke her hip July 17, had hip-replacement surgery and was sent home from the UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center on Wednesday.
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