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Lindsay Lohan: ‘Moving to London Was the Best Thing I’ve Done for Myself’

Lindsay Lohan is getting a fresh start. The once-troubled actress, 30, opened up about her new life in London, far from the Hollywood spotlight, during a rare interview on Turkey’s Habertürk TV on Wednesday, October 12.

During the appearance, Lohan, 30, said she decided to change her life after being “born into a very tumultuous relationship” with her parents and spending more than a decade on center stage in Los Angeles. As a result, she moved to London in 2012.

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“I became very involved with meditation — Deepak Chopra [and] transcendental meditation,” she explained. “This became a very big ritual of my life. I took the time to kind of take out and weed out the bad, and only keep the good. Then I moved to London because New York was too fast for me, because I slowed down and it kept going, and I couldn’t keep up and I wasn’t meant to. Moving to London was the best thing I’ve done for myself. I think as you grow up, life changes and you experience new things.”

Lindsay Lohan headscarf
Lindsay Lohan speaks to the press while wearing a headscarf given by a Syrian woman, after her visit at a container town where Syrian refugees live in the Nizip district of Gaziantep in Turkey on October 08, 2016. Kerem Kocalar/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

The Mean Girls actress continued, “In London, I was able to take myself outside of whatever my family was doing and the people I had in my life that maybe weren’t the best people for me. Maybe it was my fault, I can’t say that because it’s in the past. In London, I was able to sit alone and say, ‘What is it that I want in life?'”

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Lohan says it was then that she decided she wanted to work with children and study Islam.

“I love giving back to people, and whether I do a movie or not, I want it to be a true story about someone’s life that has occurred so people can actually see real things,” she explained. “I’ve done all these Disney movies, and these are not real things. As much as I love it and I appreciate it — and I would love to play the Little Mermaid one day — I want to talk about real things right now. I’m 30 years old and life is going to keep going, and I want it to go in the right way and to be able to control my life as I live it day by day.”

Lindsay Lohan
Lindsay Lohan at the opening of Lohan Nightclub in Athens, Greece on October 16, 2016. Aristidis Vafeiadakis/ZUMA Press/Splash News

The Long Island native had her breakout role at the age of 12 in 1998 when she starred as the dual role of twins Annie and Hallie in The Parent Trap. She later went on to star in several hit comedies, including Freaky Friday and Mean Girls, in addition to releasing two music albums.

Related: PHOTOS: Child Stars Gone Bad

In the years that followed, Lohan became a tabloid fixture following several arrests, court appearances and trips to jail and rehab facilities. After she moved to London, she began living a more low-key lifestyle. In April 2016, she got engaged to Russian business heir Egor Tarabasov. Three months later, the couple separated after they got into an altercation at her London apartment.

The Disney alum traveled to Turkey in September to advocate for Syrian refugees. She recently shared a series of photos on Instagram of her visit to a camp in Gaziantep, where she listened to the stories of families who fled from Syria.

Amid her newfound passion as an activist, Lohan says she doesn’t have time to “watch social media” or pay attention to gossip. “In London we have news and Bloomberg all day,” she said. “I don’t have, like, Access Hollywood and all these other shows. I don’t see this anymore. For four years now, I don’t see this, and I love it. … This is great for me!”

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