Lindsay Lohan digging deeper hole for herself

If you really want to understand Lindsay Lohan, you could do worse than start with her fingernails.

Last week, the Hollywood actress celebrated her 24th birthday in a Beverly Hills court where she was sentenced to 90 days in prison for violating her probation.

She had missed too many of the alcohol education classes she'd been ordered to attend following two driving under the influence (DUI) offences.

She blamed her schedule and time working with children in Morocco.

"I don't want you to think I don't respect you and your terms because I really did think that I was doing what I was supposed to do and I mean that with all my heart," she said.

Judge Marsha Revel was unmoved. As the verdict was read out, Lohan's eyebrows rose, her jaw dropped, her strawberry blonde hair tumbled loose from its demure pleat and, finally, her freckled face scrunched into tears.

We know all this, of course, because every last second was played out to the whirr and click of the cameras. As the post-courtroom analysis began in the world's media - was this just another compelling performance from Lohan? Or was the sentence unduly harsh, making an example of a high-profile defendant? - another story was already unspooling.

A canny picture editor had zoomed in on Lohan's middle finger, which she had pressed anxiously to her lips and swivelled towards the judge throughout the hearing. There, inked in black letters on a pastel swirl of varnish, was Lohan's own verdict: "F**k u".

What does this fingernail rebellion tell us about Lohan? Sadly, almost everything. It sums up, in tiny lower-case detail, a life lived through a telephoto lens. The obscenity is childish - the kind of trick a high school pupil might pull on her teacher - but also shows awareness that her every move is captured, homed in on, analysed.

Whether the message was meant for the judge, her father or the paparazzi is irrelevant; Lohan knew that, after the judge's summing-up, she would have the last word.

Well, not quite. She later took to Twitter to address the manicure furore. "Didn't we do our nails as a joke with our friend dc? it had nothing to do w/court ... it's an airbrush design from a stencil xx."

It was followed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - delivered, naturally, in 140-character morsels. A court case for our times, played out in the gossip columns and social networking sites that Lohan calls her home as much as the Hollywood Hills.

Whatever Lohan's punishment turns out to be - she is unlikely to serve more than 23 days in jail - when she arrives at the Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood, Los Angeles, on July 20, it will be the culmination of a particularly rocky six months for an actress intent on redefining the role of Hollywood hell-raiser for the 21st century.

In January, her clothing line was accused of copying. In March, she was sacked by Ungaro after just one critically panned collection. In April, she was dumped from The Other Side, in which she was due to star opposite Woody Harrelson, after the film's financiers decided she was "unbankable".

In May, she fell off a yacht in Cannes when she was supposed to be preparing for a hearing in Beverly Hills. Claiming to have had her passport stolen, she made it to court four days late.

In between, there have been wild nights out, spats with Hollywood it-girls, family feuds and an exhaustively documented on-off romance with DJ Samantha Ronson.

The only thing Lohan hasn't done in the past six months is a film. The actress hasn't "opened" a movie since 2005's Herbie: Fully Loaded. Her last film, Labor Pains, went straight to cable. The one before, I Know Who Killed Me, won a record eight Golden Raspberry Awards including two for Lohan in the Worst Actress category for her dual roles as twins.

As a career low, it came with added bite. Lohan had first come to prominence in 1998 playing twins in The Parent Trap. "Lindsay Lohan has the same kind of sunny charm Hayley Mills projected [in the 1961 original]", wrote Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Disney snapped her up for a three-picture deal. By then, Lohan was already an old hand. She was born in 1986 in New York, the eldest child of Dina Sullivan, a singer and dancer, and Michael Lohan, a Wall St trader. She began her career at 3, making more than 100 commercials.

Her Disney films established her as a perky, freckled and bankable screen presence, but it was her first post-Disney outing, in Tina Fey's Mean Girls, which brought the box-office big bucks and awards. But things were starting to unravel and a cycle of rehab, lost film roles, car crashes and cocaine possession came next. In 2007 she served 87 minutes in prison for DUI.

Lohan still has considerable talent to fall back on - and she knows it.

In the meantime, her trajectory has a worrying precedent. In 2008, she recreated Marilyn Monroe's last photo shoot for New York magazine, building on an obsession which began as a child and which has seen Lohan name her fashion line after the actress' birthdate, commission artworks of her and buy Monroe's old flat.

One can only hope that her emulation stops before it's too late.

- INDEPENDENT