An advertising sign stands outside the offices of Medistat Group Associates in DeSoto, Texas, on Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2012. Dr. Jacques Roy, who ran the business, and six other associates were arrested and charged with recruiting homeless people, among others, as part of a $375 million home health care fraud scheme, authorities announced Tuesday. The federal indictment accused Jacques Roy of leading a scheme that billed Medicare for home health services that were not medically necessary or were not done. Also indicted were Roy’s office manager as well as five owners of home health agencies. (AP Photo/The Dallas Morning News, Michael Ainsworth)
An advertising sign stands outside the offices of Medistat Group Associates in DeSoto, Texas, on Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2012. Dr. Jacques Roy, who ran the business, and six other associates were arrested and charged with recruiting homeless people, among others, as part of a $375 million home health care fraud scheme, authorities announced Tuesday. The federal indictment accused Jacques Roy of leading a scheme that billed Medicare for home health services that were not medically necessary or were not done. Also indicted were Roy’s office manager as well as five owners of home health agencies. (AP Photo/The Dallas Morning News, Michael Ainsworth)
Dr. Peter Budetti, Deputy Administrator for Program Integrity with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, center, speaks about a healthcare fraud scheme during a news conference Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2012, in Dallas. Looking on in background from left are Daniel R. Levinson, Inspector General U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Bill Corr, Deputy Secretary U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, James Cole, Deputy Attorney General and Lanny A. Breuer , Assistant Attorney General. Officials announced federal charges in what they called the largest case of medical fraud in U.S. history involving $375 million. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
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DALLAS (AP) — Years after Jacques Roy started filing paperwork that would have made his practice the busiest Medicare provider in the U.S., authorities say they’ve found most of his work was a lie.
They accused Roy on Tuesday of “selling his signature” to collect Medicare and Medicaid payments for work that was never done or wasn’t necessary. Others charged in the scheme are accused of fraudulently signing up patients or offering them cash, free groceries or food stamps to give their names and a number used to bill Medicare.
Authorities say Roy’s practice certified 11,000 Medicare beneficiaries through more than 500 home health providers over five years. More than 75 of those agencies have had their Medicare payments suspended.
Roy, 41, a doctor who owned Medistat Group Associates in DeSoto, Texas, faces up to 100 years in prison if he’s convicted of several counts of health care fraud and conspiracy to commit health care fraud. Six others, including the owners of three home health service agencies, are also charged.
Roy’s attorney, Patrick McLain, said he had yet to review much of the evidence but Roy maintained his innocence.
A host of top officials from the Justice and Health and Human Services departments announced the investigation Tuesday in Dallas. They argued that the announcement was proof that changes in how Medicare data is analyzed had worked. The scheme was the largest dollar amount by a single doctor uncovered by a task force on Medicare fraud, authorities said.
The officials said years of alleged “off the charts” billing by Roy went unnoticed because they did not have the tools to catch it. Health and Human Services has since beefed up its data analysis and can track other cases, HHS Inspector General Dan Levinson said.
“We’re now able to use those data analytic tools in ways — in 2012 and 2011 — that no, we really could not have done in years past,” Levinson said.
The department also is working on a system of “predictive modeling” to flag suspicious billings for investigation before they are paid, HHS Deputy Secretary Bill Corr said.
But others still have questions about how a fraud so big could have gone unnoticed for so long.
Patrick Burns, spokesman for the advocacy group Taxpayers Against Fraud, credited HHS for hiring Peter Budetti, CMS’ deputy administrator for program integrity, to upgrade its systems. But Burns said the department still had no excuse for missing obvious problems.
“You can’t have 11,000 bills from a single doctor if you’re the number one home health provider in the nation,” Burns said. “You can’t see that many patients. It’s not physically possible.”
HHS investigators noticed irregularities with Roy’s practice about one year ago, officials said.
Roy had “recruiters” finding people to bill for home health services, said U.S. Attorney Sarah Saldana, the top federal prosecutor in Dallas. Some of those alleged patients, when approached by investigators, were found working on their cars and clearly not in need of home health care, she said.
Medicare patients qualify for home health care if they are confined to their homes and need care there, according to the indictment.
Saldana said Roy used the home health agencies as “his soldiers on the ground to go door to door to recruit Medicare beneficiaries.”
“He was selling his signature,” she said.
For example, authorities allege Charity Eleda, one of the home health agency owners charged in the scheme, visited a Dallas homeless shelter to recruit homeless beneficiaries staying at the facility, paying recruiters $50 for each person they found. When the shelter’s security guards allegedly kicked Eleda out several times, she began to see patients listed as homebound at a church several blocks away, the indictment alleges.
A message was left Tuesday at Eleda’s Dallas-based company, Charry Home Care Services Inc.
Others indicted are accused of offering free health care and services like food stamps to anyone who signed up and offered their Medicare number.
Roy would “make home visits to that beneficiary, provide unnecessary medical services and order unnecessary durable medical equipment for that beneficiary,” the indictment alleged. “Medistat would then bill Medicare for those visits and services.”
The indictment says Roy’s business manager — identified only by his initials — recorded conversations between the two in January 2006.
Roy has previously had his medical license suspended by state authorities. In 2001, he received a 30-day suspension and five years of probation for allegedly having an affair with a patient to whom he was prescribing the painkiller hydrocodone. The patient died in a 1999 car wreck and was found to have high levels of hydrocodone in her blood, according to an order from the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners.
The board of medical examiners took Roy off probation in 2005, about a year early, according to another order. The Dallas Morning News first reported Roy’s suspension.
Health care fraud is estimated to cost the government at least $60 billion a year, mainly in losses to Medicare and Medicaid. Officials say the fraud involves everything from sophisticated marketing schemes by major pharmaceuticals encouraging doctors to prescribe drugs for unauthorized uses to selling motorized wheelchairs to people who don’t need them.
___
Associated Press writers Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar in Washington, D.C. and Juan Lozano in Houston contributed to this report.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — A scientist who created an easier-to-spread version of the bird flu said his work is not as risky as people fear. The U.S. government is asking its biosecurity advisers to reconsider if the research should be made public.
Bird flu only occasionally sickens people, mostly after close contact with infected poultry, but it can be deadly when it does. Scientists have long feared it might mutate to spread more easily and thus spark a pandemic. Researchers in the Netherlands and the state of Wisconsin were studying how that might happen when they created bird flu strains that at least some mammals — ferrets — can spread by coughing or sneezing.
The work triggered international controversy. U.S. health officials urged the details be kept secret so would-be terrorists couldn’t copy the strains, and critics worried that a lab accident might allow deadly viruses to escape.
But contrary to public perceptions, the airborne bird flu didn’t kill the ferrets, Dr. Ron Fouchier of the Netherlands’ Erasmus University told a meeting of U.S. scientists Wednesday. In fact, he said those previously exposed to regular flu were protected from severe disease.
Fouchier said publishing the research would help other scientists monitor the so-called H5N1 bird flu for similar mutations in the wild, and to test vaccines and treatments.
A federal biosecurity panel first sounded the alarm about the research, concerned about the easier mammal-to-mammal spread. The U.S. is asking that panel to conduct another review of the two laboratories’ work, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health said Wednesday. He said the board should hear some new data that came to light at a recent closed-door meeting of the World Health Organization, where international flu experts concluded the research eventually should be published.
NEW YORK |
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Tony Award winning actress, Kristin Chenoweth, returns to prime time television with “GCB” (Good Christian Belles), portraying a Botox-injecting Bible blogger, Carlene Cockburn.
The once ugly duckling is living a picture perfect life until former nemesis, Amanda, returns to their hometown of Dallas, Texas, and that’s where the laughs begin.
Chenoweth, star of film, TV and stage, also recently released a country album, “Some Lessons Learned,” featuring songs by Dolly Parton, Diane Warren and Lady Antebellum’s, Hillary Scott.
Reuters spoke to Chenoweth about her new series, which premieres on ABC March 4, Christianity, and why she loves Dallas.
Q: First of all, what the heck does GCB stand for?
A: “‘Good Christian Belles’ … our show is less about religion and more about how women handle the good and evil in their lives and how they handle each other.”
Q: How did you prepare for colorful Carlene Cockburn, who lives by the adage, “Cleavage makes your cross hang straight?”
A: “It was really important for me to portray someone who had been bullied and who had been hurt. Now that she’s redone herself, and I mean ‘redone’ herself, she’s been the queen for a while and now that same bully is back in town and has changed. And like so many of us, we don’t believe that people can change and forgiveness is very difficult. That’s what this show deals with: forgiveness, friendship, love and kindness. I think Carlene struggles with wanting to be a good Christian, rather than letting Amanda really have it.”
Q: Is Carlene based on anyone we know?
A: “She’s based on an amalgam of women. Some I grew up with, some I went to church with and some who I might be related to. She has a big heart and wants everyone to get along, but she fights it within herself. That is a demon that a lot of people can understand.”
Q: Is Dallas a big part of the show?
A: “Dallas is definitely a huge part of our world, a third character. I think the show is a love letter to Dallas. I love Dallas! It’s got great shopping, what can I say?”
Q: Outside the show, what was your inspiration for Maddie’s Corner, your nonprofit organization created to help animals?
A: “In our business it’s so easy to get caught up in the whole ‘me me me me me,’ even if you’re not necessarily a selfish type of person. I needed something to take care of and I wasn’t getting married and I wasn’t having a child, so I got my baby, Madeline Kahn Chenoweth, my dog, and she changed my life.
“I wanted to see other people experience this same happiness through pet adoption. We also give a lot of time and financial assistance when crisis hits, like Katrina, for example. Obviously people are so important, but we don’t want to forget about these little furry babies. My dream is for the organization to continue to grow, while providing more awareness about animal adoption.” (www.maddiescorner.org)
Q: Is it true that Dolly Parton wants you to play her in a new musical she’s writing about her life?
A: “Yes, that’s true and I would love to play her. She’s such an amazing entertainer and such an amazing person who has a great story to tell. I could see me doing that for sure.”
Q: If someone wrote a musical about your life, who would you want to star in the title role?
A: “I always joke that it could be the Olsen twins, when one of them is tired the other could take over. I’ve had an interesting journey and I’ve learned a lot of lessons, hard ones, good ones, fun ones, but that’s what life is. I don’t know if people would find me interesting enough, but I have some stories to tell.”
Q: You’ve been open about being adopted. What advice do you have for people thinking about adoption?
A: “Adoption is such a wonderful option. I was given the most beautiful life because my birth mother was smart enough and cared enough to carry me for nine months to give me to Junie and Jerry, who are my parents and have raised me. I’m so thankful to my birth mother for giving me life.”
(Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)
(This story was corrected to show title in headline)
LOS ANGELES |
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Davy Jones, a onetime teen heartthrob as a member of the 1960s made-for-television pop band The Monkees, died on Wednesday after suffering a heart attack near his home in Florida, according to his longtime publicist. He was 66.
Jones was stricken while attending to horses he kept in Indiantown, Florida, about halfway between the Atlantic coast and Lake Okeechobee, spokeswoman Helen Kensick said, but she had no further details. Jones had lived with his third wife, Jessica Pacheco-Jones, in Hollywood, Florida, in recent years, she said.
Born in Manchester, England, Jones was the lone British member and principal teen idol of the rock quartet featured for two seasons on the NBC comedy series “The Monkees.” The prime-time hit was inspired in part by the Beatles film “A Hard Day’s Night” and ran from the fall of 1966 to August 1968.
Although not allowed to play their own instruments on their early records, Jones and his three cohorts — Micky Dolenz, Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork — had several hits that sold millions of copies, including “Last Train to Clarksville” and “I’m a Believer.”
Jones sang lead vocals on the hit single “Daydream Believer,” as well as such songs as “A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You,” and “Valleri.”
Jones got his start as an 11-year-old actor on the still-running British soap opera “Coronation Street” before landing a role as the Artful Dodger in a West End production of “Oliver!” He went on to originate that role for the Broadway production and earned a Tony nomination.
But Jones gained wider stardom after answering a casting call for a TV series being created about the zany misadventures of four Beatles-like rock musicians called the Monkees. Two members of the group, Nesmith and Tork, were musicians with performing and recording experience, while Jones and Dolenz were primarily actors who more or less dabbled in music.
According to Jones, the four were selected largely on the basis of their physical chemistry.
“We looked for different types of guys to be part of this idea,” he recalled in an account posted on his website. “Micky, Peter, Mike and I were put together in one scene and everyone said, ‘That’s it … magic! We’ll use you four.”
ADEPT PERFORMERS
Although disparaged by critics as the “Pre-Fab Four” for the manufactured way in which the band came together, the group proved to be adept performers who were eventually given control over their own recordings.
Veteran label executive Don Kirshner, the show’s musical coordinator, was ultimately fired from the series when producers sided with the stars in a standoff over their musical autonomy.
The TV series, introduced by its catchy theme, “Hey, Hey, We’re the Monkees,” debuted as an immediate ratings hit weeks after the group’s first single, “Last Train to Clarksville,” had topped the pop charts.
The group collaborated early on with some of the major songwriters and session musicians of the day, including Neil Diamond, Carole King, Glen Campbell and Hal Blaine.
The Monkees’ self-titled first LP topped the album charts that October, and the popularity of the group generated a wave of merchandising, including toys, games and lunchboxes. But their only feature film, “Head,” was a box-office flop.
After their fifth album, the group began to splinter, releasing two more albums as a trio without Tork and one last LP as a duo following Nesmith’s exit in 1969.
Jones went on to pursue a less-heralded solo career and appeared as himself in a popular 1971 episode of the hit sitcom “The Brady Bunch, in which the show’s character, Marcia Brady, was president of a Davy Jones fan club and tried to get the singer to perform at her school prom.
He made another cameo as himself in the 1995 “The Brady Bunch Movie.”
Three members of the Monkees — Jones, Tork and Dolenz — teamed up for a 20th anniversary reunion tour in 1986 and regrouped again for a tour three years later. A final reunion album by all four original Monkees, “Justus,” was released in 1996, in conjunction with a TV special.
A 45th anniversary tour, again without Nesmith, was launched last year.
In addition to his wife, Jones is survived for four daughters from two previous marriages.
(Additional reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy and Christine Kearney; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Greg McCune and Cynthia Johnston)
An advertising sign stands outside the offices of Medistat Group Associates in DeSoto, Texas, on Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2012. Dr. Jacques Roy, who ran the business, and six other associates were arrested and charged with recruiting homeless people, among others, as part of a $375 million home health care fraud scheme, authorities announced Tuesday. The federal indictment accused Jacques Roy of leading a scheme that billed Medicare for home health services that were not medically necessary or were not done. Also indicted were Roy’s office manager as well as five owners of home health agencies. (AP Photo/The Dallas Morning News, Michael Ainsworth)
An advertising sign stands outside the offices of Medistat Group Associates in DeSoto, Texas, on Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2012. Dr. Jacques Roy, who ran the business, and six other associates were arrested and charged with recruiting homeless people, among others, as part of a $375 million home health care fraud scheme, authorities announced Tuesday. The federal indictment accused Jacques Roy of leading a scheme that billed Medicare for home health services that were not medically necessary or were not done. Also indicted were Roy’s office manager as well as five owners of home health agencies. (AP Photo/The Dallas Morning News, Michael Ainsworth)
Dr. Peter Budetti, Deputy Administrator for Program Integrity with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, center, speaks about a healthcare fraud scheme during a news conference Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2012, in Dallas. Looking on in background from left are Daniel R. Levinson, Inspector General U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Bill Corr, Deputy Secretary U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, James Cole, Deputy Attorney General and Lanny A. Breuer , Assistant Attorney General. Officials announced federal charges in what they called the largest case of medical fraud in U.S. history involving $375 million. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
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DALLAS (AP) — Years after Jacques Roy started filing paperwork that would have made his practice the busiest Medicare provider in the U.S., authorities say they’ve found most of his work was a lie.
They accused Roy on Tuesday of “selling his signature” to collect Medicare and Medicaid payments for work that was never done or wasn’t necessary. Others charged in the scheme are accused of fraudulently signing up patients or offering them cash, free groceries or food stamps to give their names and a number used to bill Medicare.
Roy, 41, a doctor who owned Medistat Group Associates in DeSoto, Texas, faces up to 100 years in prison if he’s convicted of several counts of health care fraud and conspiracy to commit health care fraud. Six others, including the owners of three home health service agencies, are also charged. More than 75 agencies linked to Roy have had their Medicare payments suspended.
Roy’s attorney, Patrick McLain, said he had yet to review much of the evidence but that Roy maintained his innocence.
A host of top officials from the Justice and Health and Human Services departments announced the investigation Tuesday in Dallas. They argued that the announcement was proof that changes in how Medicare data is analyzed had worked. The scheme was the largest dollar amount by a single doctor uncovered by a task force on Medicare fraud, authorities said.
The officials said years of alleged “off the charts” billing by Roy went unnoticed because they did not have the tools to catch it. Health and Human Services has since beefed up its data analysis and can track other cases, HHS Inspector General Dan Levinson said.
“We’re now able to use those data analytic tools in ways — in 2012 and 2011 — that no, we really could not have done in years past,” Levinson said.
The department also is working on a system of “predictive modeling” to flag suspicious billings for investigation before they are paid, HHS Deputy Secretary Bill Corr said.
But others still have questions about how a fraud so big could have gone unnoticed for so long.
Patrick Burns, spokesman for the advocacy group Taxpayers Against Fraud, credited HHS for hiring Peter Budetti, CMS’ deputy administrator for program integrity, to upgrade its systems. But Burns said the department still had no excuse for missing obvious problems.
“You can’t have 11,000 bills from a single doctor if you’re the number one home health provider in the nation,” Burns said. “You can’t see that many patients. It’s not physically possible.”
HHS investigators noticed irregularities with Roy’s practice about one year ago, officials said.
Roy had “recruiters” finding people to bill for home health services, said U.S. Attorney Sarah Saldana, the top federal prosecutor in Dallas. Some of those alleged patients, when approached by investigators, were found working on their cars and clearly not in need of home health care, she said.
Medicare patients qualify for home health care if they are confined to their homes and need care there, according to the indictment.
Saldana said Roy used the home health agencies as “his soldiers on the ground to go door to door to recruit Medicare beneficiaries.”
“He was selling his signature,” she said.
For example, authorities allege Charity Eleda, one of the home health agency owners charged in the scheme, visited a Dallas homeless shelter to recruit homeless beneficiaries staying at the facility, paying recruiters $50 for each person they found. When the shelter’s security guards allegedly kicked Eleda out several times, she began to see patients listed as homebound at a church several blocks away, the indictment alleges.
A message was left Tuesday at Eleda’s Dallas-based company, Charry Home Care Services Inc.
Others indicted are accused of offering free health care and services like food stamps to anyone who signed up and offered their Medicare number.
Roy would “make home visits to that beneficiary, provide unnecessary medical services and order unnecessary durable medical equipment for that beneficiary,” the indictment alleged. “Medistat would then bill Medicare for those visits and services.”
The indictment says Roy’s business manager — identified only by his initials — recorded conversations between the two in January 2006.
A spokesman for Trailblazer Health Enterprises, which paid home health claims through a contract with federal authorities, did not return a phone message Tuesday.
Health care fraud is estimated to cost the government at least $60 billion a year, mainly in losses to Medicare and Medicaid. Officials say the fraud involves everything from sophisticated marketing schemes by major pharmaceuticals encouraging doctors to prescribe drugs for unauthorized uses to selling motorized wheelchairs to people who don’t need them.
___
Associated Press writers Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar in Washington, D.C. and Juan Lozano in Houston contributed to this report.
(Reuters) – The morning after actress Meryl Streep walked off with an Oscar many bet would go to Viola Davis, Streep gave a cash-strapped school in Rhode Island a $10,000 donation in Davis’s honor, the school’s founder said on Tuesday.
Davis, 46, has been a champion for now-bankrupt Central Falls, Rhode Island, the town she grew up in and has herself donated cash to help keep the library open.
Her longtime friend and sometimes rival Streep, 62, in response to Davis’s cheerleading sent a $10,000 check to a local charter school, the Segue Institute for Learning, which faces closure.
The check arrived on Monday, the morning after Streep won the best actress Oscar for her portrayal of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady,” beating out front-runner Davis, who played a maid in “The Help.”
“We’ve just been screaming from the rooftops,” said Angelo Garcia, founder and director of operations at the school.
“We’re excited Meryl Streep has gotten the ball rolling for us, but we recognize there’s a long road ahead of us,” he said.
The school is currently located in a public building that’s slated to be sold because of financial difficulties in Central Falls, said Garcia, who has been friends with Davis since childhood.
It must buy the building or move to another location in the next 12 or 13 weeks, he said.
The donation from Streep’s Silver Mountain Foundation for the Arts – which the charity confirmed – will help the school start a capital campaign aimed at raising $1.2 million to buy and renovate the building and an adjacent community center, Garcia said.
Davis has “always kept us on her radar,” Garcia said, and the donation followed a conversation Davis had with Streep “about a little school started” by her longtime friend.
The school has more than 200 students this year and was expected to grow to 240 next year, he said.
(Editing By Barbara Goldberg and Paul Thomasch)
LOS ANGELES |
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Star couple Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck have welcomed their third child, a baby boy, People magazine said on Tuesday, without giving further details.
Garner, who made her name in the television drama “Alias,” wed actor and producer Affleck in June 2005 at a private ceremony in Turks and Caicos, in the Caribbean. They welcomed their first daughter, Violet, in December 2005, and second daughter Seraphina in 2009.
The couple, both 39, announced they were expecting their third child in August last year and while they did not reveal the baby’s sex, Garner told chat show host Jay Leno in January this year that they knew.
“It would be so weird to have a boy,” Garner was quoted as having told Ellen DeGeneres. She also said it would be “cool and different.”
Garner will next appear in the comedy “The Odd Life of Timothy Green” later this year. Affleck, who won a Best Screenplay Oscar for “Good Will Hunting,” which he co-wrote with Matt Damon, next stars in and directs the thriller “Argo.” He will also appear in an untitled Terrence Malick project with Jessica Chastain, Rachel McAdams and Rachel Weisz.
(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Zorianna Kit and Elaine Lies)
(Reuters) – Troubled actress Lindsay Lohan says she is putting her bad girl image behind her and starting a fresh chapter in life, getting back to acting after recent years of personal turmoil that included arrests and stints in jail.
The actress, 25, who is on probation from a string of legal troubles including drunk driving, drug possession and theft, has recently impressed court officials with good behavior and seemed eager to continue on a straight-and-narrow path.
Lohan, who became a fixture on the Hollywood nightlife scene as a young actress told Matt Lauer of NBC’s “Today” news show that parties were “not my thing anymore” and she was more comfortable being a “homebody.”
“I went out, actually, a few months ago with a friend. And I was so uncomfortable. Not because I felt tempted, just because it was just the same thing that it always was before. And it just wasn’t fun for me. I’ve become more of a homebody. And I like that,” the actress said in excerpts of the interview that were released on Tuesday.
Lohan rose to fame as a likeable child star in Disney movies such as “The Parent Trap” and comedies including “Freaky Friday,” but has been in and out of jail and rehab since 2007 when she was arrested for drunk driving and cocaine possession.
She currently is serving court-ordered community service at the Los Angeles County morgue as part of her probation, due to be completed at the end of March, after she admitted stealing a gold necklace from a California jewelry store in January 2011.
Lohan has expressed measures of regret before only to find herself back in trouble afterward.
In an April 2011 interview on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” she told the host: “I have made a lot of mistakes and I recognized that, but I am in the clear now,” and in September 2010, after failing a drug test, she tweeted, “I am working hard to overcome it and am taking positive steps forward everyday.”
Speaking to Lauer, the “Mean Girls” actress admitted to being in denial over her issues, saying it was “a scary thing” to express to people.
“I wasn’t as comfortable with myself then … I think it was a fear factor that I had about what was really going on. And, you know, I had to get that wakeup call,” said Lohan.
But 2012 could see a fresh start for the actress, who is set to host U.S. sketch comedy show “Saturday Night Live” on March 3 and is also in line to be cast as screen icon Elizabeth Taylor in an upcoming film, a welcome change after being dropped from projects in recent years.
The actress said she wanted to use the opportunities to “do what I’m supposed to,” adding she will “not let anyone down.”
“I could see where it could be scary for people to invest in me. And I don’t want people to have that reason to be scared anymore,” said Lohan.
The full interview with Lohan will air on Thursday, March 1.
(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy)
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