Why Drag Me To Hell Star Alison Lohman Disappeared From Hollywood

After I was a child, I needed to look at each Alison Lohman film I may discover. The actor might not be a family title, however all through the 2000s, she starred in a few of the most attention-grabbing movies being made, usually reverse extra skilled stars like Michelle Pfieffer, Nicolas Cage, and Ewan McGregor. Lohman all the time performed characters youthful than herself, and I mentally categorized her alongside different teen stars of the second like AnnaSophia Robb and Keke Palmer — regardless that she was born in 1979.

Typically, Lohman was solid as a cherubic magnificence, however different instances she performed thornier characters, together with troubled teenagers, youngster con artists, and, maybe most famously, a “hag”-hating promotion-seeker. The actor had appeared in fewer than two dozen films in her profession, but the vast majority of them had been compelling ultimately. Then, round 2009, she largely disappeared from the highlight. Within the decade and a half since, Lohman has solely popped up in three extra roles. The place did she go? Fortunately, it is not a thriller: she’s answered the query in a handful of interviews in recent times.

Lohman’s first on-screen credit got here in 1998 when she appeared on the reveals “seventh Heaven” and “Pacific Blue,” in addition to the unbelievable (or extremely dangerous, relying in your tastes)-looking monster film “Kraa The Sea Monster.” Over the following 4 years, Lohman continued exhibiting up in small roles and under-the-radar titles till she lastly gained recognition enjoying the tortured Astrid in Warner Bros’ adaptation of “White Oleander.” In response to The Hollywood Reporter, Lohman beat out practically 400 different younger actors to get the half, and the vital response to her star-making position was nice. “Astrid is a tremendously weighty and prolonged position for a thesp with no prior function expertise, however Lohman takes it on with nice confidence,” Selection’s Robert Koehler wrote on the time.

After “White Oleander,” Lohman instructed THR she began getting roles provided to her sans audition, and her agent even instructed her she was within the working for the Mary Jane position in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man.” Over the following few years, she appeared in the Tim Burton fable “Massive Fish,” Ridley Scott’s “Matchstick Males,” and a unfastened adaptation of the horse woman basic “My Good friend Flicka.” Lohman additionally lent her voice to the English dub of Hayao Miyazaki’s “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind,” performed a really grownup position reverse Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth within the thriller “The place the Reality Lies,” and popped up in Robert Zemeckis’ uncanny valley “Beowulf” as Ursula. Then, in 2009, Lohman capped off an unbelievable decade by starring within the gory sci-fi flick “Gamer” and at last working with Raimi on the even grosser horror hit “Drag Me To Hell.”

By the top of the aughts, Lohman had been working as an actor for over a decade, and it is clear from her 2022 dialog with THR that the wide selection of productions she had been part of — a few of them bodily demanding, and others mentally so — had been cumulatively taxing. She lived in small-town Alaska for the Robin Williams-led darkish comedy “The Massive White,” discovered “to trip a horse, fall off and get again up … the exhausting means” on “Flicka,” and did intensive inexperienced display work for “Beowulf.” Lohman nonetheless spoke positively about all of those experiences, however mentioned that when she visited Wyoming through the “Flicka” shoot, she had already began contemplating a transfer out of Los Angeles.

The profession that kicked off with an emotionally heavy position as a teen in foster care in “White Oleanders” ended with an much more grueling half in Raimi’s “Drag Me To Hell.” Lohman instructed THR that although she adores Raimi, “that film required a stage of dedication that was far more than what I believed it will be after I first began. It was lengthy, lengthy, lengthy hours.” By the top of manufacturing, she had developed shingles, and her physician gave her a get up name, saying: “No matter you are doing, it is advisable cease since you’re getting sick.” When she met her husband Mark Neveldine whereas making “Gamer,” she mentioned one thing he instructed her modified the way in which she considered her life: “He mentioned, ‘You recognize, you do not have to work. You may take a break,'” she recalled in the THR retrospective. “Nobody had ever mentioned that to me.”

In a 2024 interview with IndieWire, Lohman revealed that she felt she “simply type of received pulled round and manipulated by so many appearing coaches who did not have good intentions” when she was beginning out within the trade. It isn’t the primary time she’s alluded to dangerous actors in Hollywood, both. In her THR profile from two years earlier, she complimented the creatives she’s labored with who haven’t any “ego,” shouting out Burton, Raimi, and Robin Williams alongside the way in which. She equally talked about that Ridley Scott trusted his actors on “Matchstick Males,” stating, “That is what a superb director does.”

In distinction, Lohman’s description of her work on “The place the Reality Lies,” an unrated noir-ish film by which she performs a journalist within the ’70s who’s manipulated by the boys round her, is fairly telling. She referred to as filmmaker Atom Eyogan “a terrific director,” however mentioned that it “was one of many roles I in all probability should not have executed.” She chalked the error as much as her lack of knowledge of the character from the start, and mentioned that “even [Eyogan] received a bit of insecure with my talents and that induced it to type of snowball. He tried to put it aside and management it however the extra you try this, the extra it will get twisted.”

“The place the Reality Lies” is a reasonably sordid film, one that features a scene the place Colin Firth’s character will get Lohman’s reporter intoxicated and talks her into having intercourse with a girl to achieve blackmail materials. The movie’s poster tellingly options the faces of stars Bacon and Firth, whereas the one girl we see (who, left ambiguous, might be both Lohman or Rachel Blanchard’s Maureen) is proven bare from behind as she appears up on the males. The evaluations of the movie had been equally sexist; referencing a scene by which a personality is discovered lifeless, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Ruthe Stein wrote that Lohman was “so shrill and annoying as Karen that you find yourself wishing she had been the one floating in that bathtub.”

Once more, Lohman appeared to haven’t any exhausting emotions concerning the movie, however when requested about her takeaways from her time as an actor, she instructed THR, “I’d be sure that no matter movie I select, that the character actually resonated inside me someplace. And that the director had the arrogance in me and trusted me with that position in order that they would not really feel the necessity to management it.”

In response to Lohnman, she was by no means too eager on the concept of being mega-famous. She instructed IndieWire she remembered being confronted with a choice after “Drag Me To Hell” got here out. “It was type of like: Do you need to be a family title? I do not assume I actually, actually needed that, to be within the public eye,” she defined.

Chatting with THR, Lohman mentioned she wasn’t into the way in which she was handled when she was a well-known face. “The half that I do like about anonymity is if you meet somebody and they do not know who you’re, they’re so totally different in the direction of you,” she instructed the outlet. “That is what you miss as a well-known actor as a result of folks deal with you so otherwise and it is true. You are not likely going by what regular folks undergo as a result of it is so coddled and never actual.” She apparently enjoys the anonymity of post-acting life, saying, “If somebody does discover out that I used to be an actress earlier than, in a bizarre means, it is type of a bummer as a result of they do not see me anymore. The bubble bursts and I am now an actress. I simply need to be me.”

Lohman is way from the primary actor to step away from Hollywood partially because of a want for much less fame; Helen Hunt has made comparable statements through the years, and it is simple to see why the glow of the highlight can start to really feel harsh and synthetic after extended publicity.

Lohman mentioned that when she met Neveldine and he inspired her to take a break if she wanted one, she started brainstorming concepts associated to dwelling on a farm. The pair then purchased a 200 acre farm in upstate New York, and based on IndieWire, had been gifted two goats for his or her marriage ceremony. Once they started to have youngsters, Lohman mentioned she realized she wasn’t very into juggling the 2 separate worlds — appearing and parenting. “Perhaps I am like a micromanager, nevertheless it’s exhausting for me to be going out and in. It is like two totally different lives,” she instructed IndieWire.

Since 2009, Lohman has solely appeared in three movies, together with Neveldine’s “The Vatican Tapes.” She instructed THR that she obtained a lot of provides to work when her children had been too younger for her to be open to it, however after 5 years or so, they dried up. Lohman mentioned she typically misses appearing, however she at the moment teaches it, and hopes to create a greater expertise for up-and-comers than those she had with appearing coaches. “I’ve a wholesome understanding of what it means to be an actor. I haven’t got some other ego-driven methods,” she instructed IndieWire final 12 months. She additionally mentioned she’d work with Raimi once more in a heartbeat; “I’d do something with Sam,” she instructed THR, describing the horror legend as a “artistic genius” and “like a child in a sweet retailer.”

In what is likely to be one of the crucial surprising “the place are they now” codas ever, Lohman endorsed Donald Trump within the 2024 election, writing on X (previously Twitter) that she can be voting Republican for the primary time. “i really feel like we will stay in a safer and more healthy nation with @RobertKennedyJr and @realDonaldTrump,” she mentioned in a voting day submit.