Lindsay Lohan Knows What It Feels Like to Be a Refugee

Lindsay Lohan says she knows what it feels like to be a refugee.

The Mean Girls star’s empathy for the displaced and dispossessed comes not as result of the time she has spent in cells, prisons, and courtrooms nor as a result of constantly shuttling around the world on one five-star holiday after another, but due to losing part of her finger in a boating accident (when she was, er, on a five-star holiday on the Greek island of Mykonos).

Lohan, a big fan of the repressive Turkish regime, discussed her finger-squishing incident along with her plans for Mean Girls 2 and her efforts to bring attention to the plight of refugees in an online video interview with CNN, speaking to the cable-news network’s Abu Dhabi bureau in the United Arab Emirates, where she is spending New Year’s Eve doing an appearance at a nightclub.

The actress, last seen in The Canyons, told CNN, “Losing half of my finger and getting it back was one of the best things that’s ever happened to me,” adding, “If that didn’t happen to me, if I didn’t lose a part of myself essentially—and I weirdly think about this when I meditate—I wouldn’t have stayed in Turkey. I wouldn’t have stayed there, and I wouldn’t have understood what it feels like to lose a limb.”

Don’t you just love how she throws the meditation line in there?

Speaking about her experience visiting a Syrian refugee camp in Turkey, Lohan, 30, told CNN: “It was scary for me at the time because I’m entering a world that I know nothing really about and I’m trying to learn about it… But the most amazing experience I’ve ever had, was when I went into those container camps and saw what the Turkish people are actually doing for people that are just walking aimlessly and have nowhere else to go, and giving them refuge.”

Asked for her response to those who might be cynical about the idea of her doing humanitarian work, she said, “I say they should come join,” she replied. “Come help.… Getting on the ground, getting your hands dirty, and then discussing it after, so you know what you’re talking about. It’s easy to go take a photo somewhere and say, ‘I work with kids.’ Really? Do you? What are you working with, with kids? No, you have to go there, learn the statistics, the land, the people, what they mean, so money in the world goes to the right places.”

Lohan told CNN that she will begin shooting a film in April about a Swiss couple abducted by the Taliban, but, on a lighter note, added, “I have been trying so hard to do Mean Girls 2.... I’ve already written a treatment for it; it I just need a response.”