The latest interview with Lindsay Lohan in Marie Claire magazine is light years away from her previous interviews in which she defended her partying behavior and blamed others for her problems. As much as it pains me to give her credit, Lohan sounds much more grounded, crediting herself as well as girlfriend Samantha Ronson for re-organizing her priorities and staying out of trouble. She looks to actor Robert Downey Jr. for inspiration.

Outside the trailer, a bulldog slurps from a water dish. His name is Cadillac, and he belongs to Samantha Ronson, the proto-scenester and DJ with whom Lohan is enmeshed, although she refuses to confirm no-brainer rumors that they are lovers. Lohan’s anecdotes are studded with references to Ronson; noting a star tattoo on her hand, she says, “Samantha has a bunch of stars, so I got that. And she got this” – indicating a little heart. When she tells me, with a giggle, that she’s looking to buy a house “with someone,” it just seems obvious who that someone is. But when I ask Lohan specifically about the relationship, she says, “Um, people can think what they want. I’m really happy, and that’s all that matters.” As for the newspaper item claiming she yelled at Ashley Olsen to “get your 15-year-old Full House ass away from my girlfriend” when she saw Olsen talking to Ronson at a club last April, Lohan retorts, “No! No. I never said anything like that. I would never talk like that. I mean, get me angry enough and I’m sure I’ll have something to say, but I didn’t say that.”

With three stints in rehab behind her (and the threat of jail, if she violates her probation), Lohan has had a relatively peaceful time of it in recent months, leading me to suggest that Ronson’s a good influence. “She’s a great person,” Lohan says. “And she’s a great influence on people around her. But I think that anything that’s changed in my life is because of me. I’ve gone through it and I’ve had to deal with it and I’ve made the decision to move forward. So yeah, she’s a great person,” Lohan concludes of Ronson, who’ll come loping across the parking lot to the trailer later on wearing her signature porkpie hat, plus a T-shirt, jeans, and cinder-block-size red trainers, emphatically unlaced.

Despite the apparently acute ADD, Lohan seems keenly aware of the fact that she’s starting a new chapter – that she knows how much she stands to lose and that life has given her another chance. After a rebuke from a producer of her 2007 movie Georgia Rule for partying too much, after concern that she might be deemed uninsurable by Hollywood, she’s methodically rebuilding her career, giving her all to a first-time film director, Lara Shapiro, for the low-budget Labor Pains, working on a danceable, R&B-type follow-up to her second album, A Little More Personal (Raw), and submitting to the family-friendly small screen, in a guest spot on Ugly Betty. It’s a page out of the career-rehab playbook of Robert Downey Jr., whose return from the dark side started with a recurring role on Ally McBeal.

“He’s an amazing actor,” Lohan says of Downey. “Look at people like that who have gone through shit and had to work that much harder to get to where they are now.” Lying on the bed in her trailer now, atop a pink comforter, looking at me through narrowed go-go girl eyes beneath a thick canopy of fake lashes, Lohan says, “I’ve learned. I’ll never go back. And it’s not a never-say-never type thing – it’s just, I know. I know.”

Lohan also acknowledges – finally – that her previous lifestyle of partying at hotels like the Chateau Marmont and getting caught up in the Hollywood trends was destroying her on every level, and that her family situation played a big factor.

Whereas Lohan used to live in hotels – “I didn’t want to be alone, so whatever I needed I could just go downstairs and there were people there” – she now recognizes the unhealthiness of that. “It wasn’t a way of life,” she says. “Not very consistent.” Whereas she once owned a pair of puppies, like every other high-gloss attention-seeker in Hollywood, she now admits she “got them on a whim – I wasn’t in the right headspace” to take care of them (so she gave them to her mother). Whereas the petulant, postadolescent, hungover Lohan could single-handedly roil a movie set with a grimace, she now accepts the responsibility that comes with being a star of her wattage. “It’s a lot of pressure, because everyone’s depending on you,” Lohan says. “And your mood, when you go on set, everybody feels it. On a day when you’re tired, it’s important to just say good morning to everyone so they’re kind of aware that it’s gonna be a good day. Jamie Lee Curtis” – her Freaky Friday costar – “told me that.”

Problem is, when you’re Lindsay Lohan, the drama tends to roll in by the hour. “There was this one day when something happened with my dad, and my best friend’s grandmother passed away, and I was upset, and everyone [on set] kind of changed, and I felt it,” she says. Later, back in her trailer, she pulled herself together. “But it’s hard, because then, when do you feel?”

The thing that happened with her dad, Michael Lohan, the former felon who careens in and out of Lindsay’s life, leaving a trail of tabloid sludge – that would be the revelation that he might have another daughter, now 13, the result of a fling with a Montana massage therapist. “I don’t know what’s going on with it,” Lohan says, wearily. “I haven’t asked him any questions. Apparently we’ve been in the dark for so many years. We’ve gone through enough with him. Enough is enough.” As a result, she’s shutting down communication with Dad for a bit – “until he decides to be a grown-up.”

[From Marie Claire]

I can’t say I’m a fan, but I will give Lindsay props for finally copping to her previous mistakes instead of continuing to defend her reckless, selfish behavior. She sounds a lot more mature than her dad at this point- and that can only be described as progress. And it certainly sounds like she and Ronson are getting serious- probably the first serious, healthy relationship Lindsay’s had in her entire life, including her parents. I’m even going to reserve judgment on Labor Pains, although the trailer for the movie looks like a dud.

Lindsay Lohan is shown at the VMAs on Sunday. Credit: WENN