HOLLYWOOD -- She may be a fashion maven, but Lindsay Lohan needs a refresher course in geography.

When she arrived to do interviews for her new comedy Mean Girls, which opens Friday, Lohan was wearing a pink tube-top with a University of Alberta logo.

"I have no idea where this place is. I bought the tube-top at Lisa Klein. It's a boutique that has all these vintage clothing which they remake into other things," explained Lohan, when asked if she was planning to enrol at the university featured on her top.

"I definitely plan to go to college at some point, but not right now. It's important I establish myself as an actor before I take the time off.

"To go off to college now would be to put on hold everything I've been working towards so hard these past couple of years."

Lohan is certainly pursuing her career goal.

She is currently juggling three films in various stages of development including a remake of Disney's The Love Bug.

She has also agreed to star as an aspiring teen actor in Dramarama, and as a high school student who becomes the target of a jealous classmate in Gossip Girl.

"I had really set my heart on shooting a little independent movie called Love and Death at Tarrington Prep. We were supposed to be filming in Seattle in May, but there were problems with funding and then Adam Brody had to go back to shooting more episodes of The O.C."

Lohan says she is trying to put all thoughts of movies out of her head for the next little while.

"On May 1st, I'm hosting Saturday Night Live. That's what I'm concentrating on right now. I just want to do a good show and make Tina Fey proud of me."

Fey wrote the screenplay for and co-stars with Lohan in Mean Girls.

Though she had been modelling since the age of three, Lohan didn't get her big break until 1998 when she starred in Disney's remake of The Parent Trap.

She won the hearts of critics and audiences as well as Blockbuster and Teen Magazine awards for best newcomer and best young actress.

After The Parent Trap, she turned down the female lead in Disney's Inspector Gadget in favour of the TV movies Life Size and Get a Clue and Bette Midler's short-lived series Bette.

In 2001, when she was still just 15, Lohan, who'd been singing since she was a child, decided to switch careers.

She signed with Emilio Estefan Jr.'s Estefan Enterprises for a five-album deal.

It was at this time Lohan made headlines in her much-publicized feud with Hillary Duff, when the two teen stars alternated dating singing sensation Aaron Carter.

"I'm not dating anyone at the moment because I prefer 24-year-old guys and that's not legal. If I did have a boyfriend, I'd make quality time for him. I would never make a guy feel secondary to my career."

Lohan never released an album, but insist she still intends to.

She put her desires for a music career on hold when Disney offered her the remake of the body-switching comedy Freaky Friday with Jamie Lee Curtis.

Made for just over $20 million US, Freaky Friday grossed $110 million in North America, an additional $50 million in international markets and is a top-seller on DVD.

"The whole time Jamie Lee and I were filming Freaky Friday, we kept saying we were going to suck. When the movie hit $100 million, Jamie phoned and invited me for lunch.

"She had made us T-shirts that read: We Didn't Suck.

"The success of Freaky Friday is the whole reason I agreed to The Love Bug."

In Mean Girls, Lohan, 17, plays Cady, a girl whose parents are naturalists, so she was raised and home-schooled in Africa. In her senior year, her parents move back to the U.S. and enrol her in a public high school.

To her shock, Cady discovers high school can be as dangerous as the jungle and that it is filled with cliques ruled by a trio of girls known as The Plastics.

Initially, Cady sets out to destroy the reputations of these privileged girls only to become one of them.

She goes from total innocent to a vicious, coniving snob.

"It was so much fun to play the b***h.

"I've never got to do that before. I went to public school until my senior year -- which I took at home and with tutors -- so I know all about school cliques."

Lohan says "according to the hierarchy in the book Queen Bees and Wannabes on which Mean Girls is based, I was a floater.

"I got along with most people because I was a jock, a cheerleader and was into arts and music. I could successfully go from one group to another. I never had that feeling of being ostracized, which is what Mean Girls is all about."

Because of all the coverage she has been getting in teen magazines, and the fact Mean Girls is being sold on her image and name, Lohan says she can't be as casual about her career as she has in the past.

"I'm 17 and acting is now a full-time job, not a hobby. It can't just be fun anymore. I have to be concerned with things like box office."

She says though "it is cool being on magazine covers because that's what I dreamed of when I started, it's also demoralizing.

"They print such silly stuff about me.

"My little sister and her friends read those magazines and believe the things that are written about me -- and that hurts."


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