Rico
It was supposed be another sun-kissed step forward for actress Lindsay Lohan – a special Mediterranean break to celebrate a milestone birthday and to start building a rare long-term relationship.
But there is nothing romantic about these disturbing new pictures from the Greek island of Mykonos, where she stayed last month hoping, at last, to put a famously troubled past behind her.
They show an angry, violent altercation between Lindsay and her fiance, Russian playboy Egor Tarabasov. She now admits that he has assaulted her several times before.
Today, in her only interview since another terrifying episode two weeks ago, this time in London, caused headlines around the world, Lohan admits that a relationship she had hoped would bring marriage and children is violent, unstable and at an end – for the moment at least.
The distressing photographs show Miss Lohan’s fiance grab hold of her arms as he tries to get his phone back from her.
‘I realise now you can’t stay in a relationship just for love,’ she says.
‘No woman can be hit and stay with that person if that person isn’t prepared to say sorry.’
The pictures from Mykonos, which have only emerged now, show a tussle occurring after Lohan and Tarabasov argue in a black 4×4.
The 30-year-old actress hurls his mobile phone on to the sand and flees the car. He chases her, grabs her roughly from behind in an attempt to grab the handset back and twists her arm behind her back.
Lohan is reluctant to go into detail about the fight in Mykonos, saying only that she threw Egor’s phone after he took hers. ‘Egor drank too much and he went crazy.’
Lindsay was heard shouting: ‘Please, please. He just strangled me. He almost killed me.’
The police were called and forced their way into the property, but no one was charged.
Lindsay left the capital and has not seen Egor since.
We meet in a hotel in Porto Cervo, Sardinia. With her long, red hair and scattering of freckles, Lohan is immediately recognisable, but nobody gives a second glance as she walks into the lobby, dressed in a designer kaftan and sunglasses.
‘When we got home I went to bed and Egor went out. A few hours later he came back and when I woke up he was standing over me. He wasn’t himself, he was being very aggressive and he attacked me.’
This is the first time she has spoken openly about Tarabasov and she starts crying. She admits she feels unsafe. ‘I wanted to do this interview because it’s time to tell the truth,’ she says. ‘There have been so many lies printed about me recently. I’ve kept quiet for so long but now I’m scared of what Egor might do to me and to himself.’
Still in tears she continues: ‘It’s not the first time. That’s the problem. But this time, someone saw. I didn’t call anyone, I’ve dealt with enough police in LA. I just left the house and went to the Connaught [Hotel] for the night. I contacted my good friend [Israeli socialite] Hofit Golan who was in St Tropez. She said, ‘Get on a plane, come and meet me,’ so I did. I needed some time for myself.
‘I’ve spent the past week fishing on my friend Marco Mavilla’s yacht with his lovely family in Sardinia.’
Mavilla is an Italian watch and sunglasses designer. Lohan adds: ‘I’ve been meditating and swimming in the ocean and listening to George Michael’s song, Faith. The lyrics are very apt.’
Lohan has been a big name for so long, that it is easy to forget she is still only 30. The former child star made her name in films such as Freaky Friday and Mean Girls – but her talent was overtaken by drug and alcohol problems, car-crash relationships and multiple arrests – and it is this that she is best-known for these days.
However, recent months had seen a change in Lohan, and the more optimistic of her fans hoped that by putting Hollywood behind her and settling down away from the public eye in London, her life was starting to recover. She met and became engaged to 23-year-old businessman Tarabasov and there were even rumours she was pregnant. She jokes with me that her newly visible stomach is the result of pasta and good Mediterranean living.
The 30-year-old actress hurled her fiance’s phone on to the sand and ran out of the vehicle which was parked near the beach
His phone can be seeing flying across the beach before it lands on the sand om the Greek island of Mykonos
The famous actress then gets out of the car and runs towards the beach where the phone had just landed
Now, though, she once again finds herself at the centre of a media firestorm. She is still wearing the four-carat emerald ring Tarabasov proposed with last September. ‘I haven’t taken it off, even after all this,’ she says.
‘The truth is, I wanted to make things work, but now I’m not sure that I can.’
She says that in recent days, she has contacted him to ask him to meet, to talk. Clearly, however, she holds out little hope of a reconciliation at this stage.
‘I need closure,’ she says. ‘I genuinely fell in love with him but he broke my trust and made me feel unsafe.
‘I know I’m not an angel but I’ve tried to fix things. It’s down to him now. I had suggested we go for couples’ counselling but there comes a time when I have to put myself first, my family, and also think about my career which I’ve worked so hard for. I also don’t want to let my fans down by not being the strong woman I have become.’
Right now, she seems more vulnerable than strong, but there was a time when she was tipped for Hollywood greatness.
She rose to fame at the age of 11 when she was chosen to star in Disney’s remake of The Parent Trap, and for the next few years, every film she made, including Freaky Friday and Herbie: Fully Loaded, struck box office gold.
As she grew older, though, her behaviour off-camera – driving under the influence of alcohol, multiple stints in rehab, failing to turn up to work – saw the roles dry up. Instead she was known as the quintessential Hollywood wild-child.
He chases her, grabs her roughly from behind in an attempt to grab the handset back and twists her arm behind her back
He could be seen sprinting out of the vehicle before finally catching up and photographs show him grabbing her arm in a bid to get his phone back
Despite several attempts to reinvigorate her career, it has now been several years since she appeared in a major film.
Instead of movies, the attention she has received has focused on her attempts to conquer her personal demons and her long list of Hollywood lovers, including Justin Timberlake, Orlando Bloom and Colin Farrell.
It probably helped that, in contrast to her famous exes, Tarabasov has nothing to do with the Hollywood high life. He is a business school graduate and the son of wealthy construction firm owner Dmitry Tarabasov, and seemed to be clean living. Lohan says they met in Mykonos last year.
‘We’ve been together nine months, three weeks and two days, and we’ve lived together since the second night I met him,’ she says. ‘He proposed on September 27, 2015, but I waited months before saying anything publicly.’
News of their engagement was reported in April, when she was spotted wearing her engagement ring. ‘We planned to marry in Lake Como next May. We should both be in Italy looking at wedding venues right now,’ she says, breaking down again.
‘All I wanted was to get married and settle down. I’ve always wanted four kids and Egor and I talked about having a family.’
Cracks began to show last month with the furious row on Mykonos.
Then came several worrying posts on social media, including a flurry of tweets Lindsay sent after Egor spent a night partying with Russian designer and socialite Dasha Pashevkina. Lindsay accused Egor of cheating on her. Jealousy has clearly been an issue – perhaps for both of them. ‘I shouldn’t have said things about Dasha. I’ve apologised to her,’ Lindsay says.
The drama, break-up and sadly, the shocking violence exposed in these pictures, is all too familiar to Lindsay. Her parents Michael and Dina separated when she was a child and divorced in 2005. Lindsay caught her father cheating on her mother and has described living with her father as ‘like walking on eggshells.’
She is close to her mother, a former dancer, but has a turbulent relationship with her father, a former Wall Street trader who has been jailed twice and has a history of drugs and violence.
‘I’ve become my mother,’ she says, recognising the irony of her situation. She says that she has broken off contact with her father after blaming him for telling the press she was pregnant.
‘My father is known for talking to the press and selling stories. He loves the attention. In the past he’s said I’ve done drugs, he put my number on the internet.
‘Who does that? Some of the stuff he’s done proves to me he doesn’t care about me.’
Having lived her life so publicly, Lindsay says she is resigned to people close to her selling stories. And there have been plenty of them. She was arrested twice for drink driving and cocaine abuse and then imprisoned for 90 days in July 2010 for breaching her parole. She did 480 hours of community service. ‘They made me work in a morgue, they wanted to make an example of me.’ Of her time in prison, she says: ‘It scared the s**t out of me, enough to make me realise you only live once.’
She publicly admitted on the Oprah Winfrey show to taking cocaine ‘ten-15 times’ on TV and being addicted to alcohol and ‘chaos’. She says: ‘I was surrounded by hangers-on and people who just wanted to party.’
Despite her recent drama, she says the hard-partying, drug- taking, alcohol-fuelled period of her life is over. She still has one vice, though – Marlboro Lights.
She has been living in London for the past four years. ‘It’s hard to get away from the paparazzi in America,’ she says. ‘In London I walk everywhere and I’m never bothered. I love the parks and the freedom. I have a quiet life, I have facials and go shopping. I meditate every day.’
After four years away from Hollywood, she would love to start working again. She says she has several films in the pipeline, including Mean Girls 2.
‘I’m not obsessed with Hollywood any more, I just want to work,’ she says. ‘My plan is to go there to work and then come home to London. I’m a really good actress, I know that. I’ve made mistakes, the important thing is I’ve learned from them.
‘I’m just sad this has all happened now because I’ve worked hard to get my life flowing again.’
Egor Tarabasov did not respond to requests for a comment.
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