Lindsay Lohan: forget those Hilary and Colin rumors—one of the movies' biggest rising stars goes on the record

After earning praise in last summer's surprise hit Freaky Friday, Lindsay Lohan breaks out her knives, and her acting chops, in the new film Mean Girls. In the Tina Fey-scripted comedy, based on Rosalind Wiseman's best-seller Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence (Three Rivers Press), Lohan's character, Cady Heron, enrolls in a suburban American high school after a lifetime of home-schooling in the African wilds. What follows is an anthropological dissection of contemporary high school culture--its norms and traditions, its food chain and battlegrounds--with the titular villains proving that the lions of the Serengeti have nothing on teenage girls, Here, producer Lynda Obst checks in on the 17-year-old actress's own triumphs and struggles in another jungle--Hollywood--as well as her progress in the school of life.