Lindsay Lohan Vanity Fair Magazine October 2010

Lindsay Lohan admits making mistakes in the past and “dabbling in certain things,” but the troubled starlet is confident she’s still got the stuff that Hollywood legends are made of and she “wants her career back.”

Lohan is trying to revive her fledgling career by appearing on the cover page of Vanity Fair’s October issue. Lohan appears in a photoshoot snapped by Norman Jean Roy in Los Angeles on her birthday (July 2) aboard what was once the yacht of another child star: Judy Garland. The spread is described as “amazing,” and comprising “some of the most beautiful photos of Lindsay” ever taken. Lohan was dressed in an evening gown, which covered her SCRAM bracelet, and she looks like a glamorous movie star from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

The July interview with Vanity Fair was conducted shortly before the 24-year-old Mean Girls star served 14 days in jail followed by 23 days of in-patient rehab for DUI probation violation. In fact, the cover, interview, and shoot were meant to coincide with the release of her latest film, Robert Rodriguez’s Machete, in which Lohan plays a gun-toting nun. During the chat, Lindsay spoke openly about her troubled life as a former Hollywood darling and her strained relationship with her media-happy father, Michael Lohan. LiLo also defended her wildchild past, arguing that she was young and curious and associating with the wrong people.

“I want my career back. I want the respect that I had when I was doing great movies. And if that takes not going out to a club at night, then so be it. It’s not fun anyway,” Lindsay says. “So many people around me would say they cared for the wrong reasons. A lot of people were pulling from me, taking from me and not giving. I had a lot of people that were there for me for, you know, the party.”

Lindsay says she used to get her news from tabloids, which she now calls “scary and sad.”

“I would look up to those girls … the Britneys and whatever. And I would be like, I want to be like that.”

The October issue of Vanity Fair will hit newsstands in New York and Los Angeles Thursday, before arriving nationwide Sept. 7.

Other Interview Highlights include:

On Moving To Los Angeles In Her Teens: “It was very go-go-go and I had a lot of responsibility; and I think just the second I didn’t have (structure) anymore — I was 18, 19 — with a ton of money and no one really here to tell me that I couldn’t do certain things … And I see where that’s gotten me now, and I don’t like it.”

On Alcoholism: “If I were the alcoholic everyone says I am, then putting a [scram] bracelet on would have ended me up in detox, in the emergency room, because I would have had to come down from all the things that people say I’m taking and my father says I’m taking — so that says something, because I was fine.”

On Drug Abuse: “I’ve never abused prescription drugs. I never have — never in my life. I have no desire to. That’s not who I am. I’ve admitted to the things that I’ve done — to, you know, dabbling in certain things and trying things ’cause I was young and curious and thought it was like, O.K., ’cause other people were doing it and othe people put it in front of me. And I see what happened in my life because of it.”

On Her Estranged Father Michael Lohan: “The worst part of it is you turn around and you see your dad crying and normally you’d be, like, happy that your father’s there. But then he has to go and do an interview right after. I think my biggest focus for myself is learning how to continue to get through the trauma that my father has caused in my life.”

On The Future: “I don’t care what anyone says. I know that I’m a damn good actress.”