Why Drag Me To Hell Star Allison Lohman Disappeared From Hollywood

When I was a kid, I wanted to watch every Alison Lohman movie I could find. The actor may not be a household name, but in the 2000s she starred in some of the most interesting films being made, often opposite more established stars like Michelle Pfeiffer, Nicolas Cage and Ewan McGregor. Lohman always played characters younger than herself, and I mentally categorized her alongside other teen stars of the moment, like AnnaSophia Robb and Keke Palmer, even though she was born in 1979.

At times, Lohman was cast as a cherubic beauty, but at other times she played more complex characters, including troubled teenagers, child con artists and, perhaps most commonly, a “want”-hating promotion seeker. During his career, the actor had appeared in less than two dozen films, but most of them were convincing in some way. Then, around 2009, she mostly disappeared from the limelight. In the decade and a half since then, Lohman has only had three additional roles. Where did she go? Fortunately, this is not a secret: she has answered this question in a few interviews in recent years.

Lohman's first on-screen credits came in 1998, when she appeared in the shows “7th Heaven” and “Pacific Blue,” as well as the incredible (or incredibly bad, depending on your taste) monster movie “Kraa The Sea Monster.” For the next four years Lohman continued to appear in small roles and under-the-radar titles until finally gaining recognition playing the tortured Astrid in the Warner Bros. adaptation of The White Oleander. According to The Hollywood ReporterLohman beat out nearly 400 other young actors for the role, and the critical response to her lead role was excellent. “Astrid is an extremely important and expansive role for an artist with no previous film experience, but Lohman takes it on with great confidence,” Variety's Robert Koehler. wrote at the time.

After “White Oleander,” Lohman told THR that she started getting offered roles without auditioning, and her agent even said she was in the running for the role of Mary Jane in Sam Raimi's “Spider-Man.” Over the next few years, she emerged Tim Burton's fable “Big Fish” A loose adaptation of Ridley Scott's Matchstick Men and the horsegirl classic My Friend Flicka. Lohman also lent her voice to Hayao Miyazaki's English dub “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind”, played a very grown-up role opposite Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth in the thriller Where the Truth Lies and appeared in Robert Zemecki's Uncanny Valley as Ursula. Lohman then capped off an incredible decade in 2009 with the gory sci-fi film Gamer and finally. working with Raimi on the even grittier horror hit Drag Me To Hell.

After all, Lohman had worked as an actor for more than a decade, and it's clear from her 2022 conversation with THR that she'd taken part in a wide variety of productions — some physically demanding, others mentally demanding. therefore – were taxed cumulatively. She lived in small-town Alaska for the Robin Williams-directed dark comedy The Big White, learned to “ride a horse, fall and get up…the hard way” in Flicka, and dabbled in extensive green game. screen work for “Beowulf”. Lohman remained positive about the whole experience, but said she had already started considering moving away from Los Angeles when she visited Wyoming while filming “Flicka.”

A career that began with an emotionally charged role as a teenager in foster care in “White Oleanders” ended with an even more grueling role in Raimi's “Drag Me to Hell.” Lohman told THR that while she adores Raimi, “this movie required a commitment that was much more than what I thought when I started it. It was long, long, long hours.” By the end of production, she had developed shingles, and the doctor woke her up, saying, “Whatever you're doing, you have to stop because you're sick.” When she met her husband, Mark Neveldine, while making Gamer, she said something he said changed the way she thought about her life: “He said, 'You know, you don't have to work. You can take a break. '' she recalled THR Retrospective. “No one had ever told me that.”

In the 2024 interview with IndieWireLohman revealed that when she started out in the industry, she felt like she was “just drawn in and manipulated by so many actors who didn't have good intentions.” It's also not the first time she's called out bad actors in Hollywood. In her THR profile two years ago, she complimented the creative staff she's worked with who don't have any “egos,” giving a shout-out to Burton, Raimi, and Robin Williams along the way. She similarly mentioned that Ridley Scott trusted his actors in Matchstick Men, stating, “That's what a good director does.”

By contrast, Lohman's description of her work on Where the Truth Lies, an underrated noir film in which she plays a 1970s journalist manipulated by the men around her, is quite telling. She called filmmaker Atom Eoghan “a great director” but said it “was one of the roles I probably shouldn't have done.” She put the mistake down to her lack of understanding of the character from the start and said that “even (Eyogan) got a little insecure about my abilities and it kind of snowballed. He was trying to save it and control it, but the more you do it , the more it is distorted.”

“Where the Truth Lies” is a rather ugly film, which includes a scene where Colin Firth's character drug Lohman's reporter and persuades him to have sex with a woman in order to obtain blackmail material. The film's poster prominently features the faces of stars Bacon and Firth, while the only woman we see (who could be either Lohman or Rachel Blanchard's Maureen, to be clear) is shown naked from behind as she looks at the men. Reviews of the film were equally sexist; referring to the scene where the character is found dead, Ruth Stein of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that Lohman was “so tough and annoying as Karen that you end up wanting her to be the one in that bathtub.”

Again, Lohman didn't seem to have any hard feelings about the film, but when asked about her return from her time as an actress, she told THR , “I'm going to make sure that whatever movie I choose, the character really resonates with me somewhere. And that the director trusted me and trusted me me that role so they don't feel the need to control it.”

According to Lohnmann, she was never too interested in the idea of ​​being very famous. She told IndieWire that she remembers being faced with the decision after “Drag Me To Hell” came out. “It was something like, 'Do you want to be a household name? I don't think I really wanted it to be out there,'” she explained.

Speaking to THR, Lohman said she didn't like the way she was treated when she was a famous face. “I love the anonymity, when you meet someone and they don't know who you are, they're so different to you,” she said. “That's what you miss as a famous actor, because people treat you so differently, and it's true. You don't really go through what normal people go through, because it's so sweet and not real.” She's apparently enjoying the anonymity of post-acting life, saying: “If someone finds out in a weird way that I used to be an actress, it's like they don't see me anymore. The bubble bursts and I'm an actress now, I just want to be me.

Lohman is far from the first actor to withdraw from Hollywood in part because he wants less fame; Helen Hunt has made similar statements over the yearsand it's easy to see why the glow of spotlights can start to feel harsh and artificial after prolonged exposure.

Lohman said that when she met Neveldine and he encouraged her to take a break if she needed one, she began to get ideas related to farm life. The couple then bought a 200-acre farm in upstate New York, and according to IndieWire, they received two goats as a wedding present. When they started having children, Lohman said she realized she didn't like juggling the two separate worlds of acting and parenting. “Maybe I'm like a micromanager, but it's hard for me to go in and out. It's like two different lives,” she told IndieWire.

Since 2009, Lohman has appeared in only three films, including Neveldine's The Vatican Tapes. She told THR that she got a lot of job offers when her kids were too young for her to be open to them, but they dried up after about five years. Lohman said she sometimes misses acting, but she currently teaches it and hopes to create a better experience for aspiring actors than the experience she had with acting coaches. “I have a healthy understanding of what it means to be an actor. I don't have other ego-driven ways,” she told IndieWire last year. She also said she would work with Raimi again after a heartbeat; “I would do anything with Sam,” she told THR , describing the horror legend as a “creative genius” and “like a kid in a candy store.”

Perhaps one of the most unexpected codes of “where are they now” in the 2024 election, Lohman endorsed Donald Trump. writing to X (earlier on Twitter) that she will be voting Republican for the first time. “I feel like we can live in a safer and healthier country with @RobertKennedyJr and @realDonaldTrump,” she said in a post on voting day.