Lindsay Lohan on Playing Elizabeth Taylor: "Everything I've Gone Through Made Me Ready" for This

USMagazine, Sunday, November 25, 2012, 6:00pm (PST)

Lindsay Lohan is ready for her close-up.

Tonight, Nov. 25, the 26-year-old actress makes her debut as screen legend Elizabeth Taylor in the Lifetime original movie Liz & Dick, about Taylor's volatile relationship with Richard Burton (played by Grant Bowler), whom she married and divorced twice.

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The small-screen biopic is one of the most anticipated television events of the year -- largely because of Lohan, who is hoping to make her long-delayed comeback after years of personal drama and legal troubles. (The star has endured a seemingly endless string of public humiliations over the last decade -- among them, five stints in rehab, six arrests, and more than 20,000 minutes behind bars.)

"Everything I've gone through made me ready to play Liz," the star told Us Weekly reporter Jennifer Peros during a recent sit-down interview in Los Angeles, adding that her trials and tribulations have made her both a better person and a better actress.

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Lohan's critics may beg to differ with that statement, but she insists she's grown up and learned her lessons. She even goes so far as to say that she displays more professionalism than the film icon she's portraying.

"Elizabeth was drunk on sets. I've never been drunk on set, ever," the Liz & Dick actress told Us. "I did my time and I respect the law."

Lohan does relate to the violet-eyed siren in other ways, though. Like Taylor, she's a former child star who became a tabloid favorite -- and not always for good reasons.

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"Since I was a kid, I've loved being on camera. Don't misconstrue that: I didn't strive to have flashbulbs at dinner or people who don't know me calling TMZ. And 99 percent of the time, it's not true," she explained. "I feel bullied. I can't think of any actor who has been subjected to such extreme publicity who hasn't, like, committed suicide."

That said, Lohan knows she brought some of the attention on herself. And she's working now to change her image, with a little help from Taylor.

"She probably would have said, 'Figure it the hell out,'" Lohan told Peros of how the Cleopatra star might have advised her. "You have to learn it for yourself sometimes."

This article originally appeared on Usmagazine.com: Lindsay Lohan on Playing Elizabeth Taylor: "Everything I've Gone Through Made Me Ready" for This