Who’s that clean-cut, sleepy-eyed cutie squiring Lindsay Lohan at Cannes, Coachella and various NYC hot spots?
No, it’s not LiLo’s latest paramour.
It’s her 26-year-old brother, Michael Lohan Jr. — an up-and-coming tech honcho who graduated summa cum laude from Ithaca College and moonlights as his older sis’ protector.
“I like to weed out the good and the bad people . . . and make sure that the people around her know that she has a much stronger support group,” says Michael of Lindsay, who has been arrested six times — with DUIs and charges of theft and cocaine possession under her belt — and has completed six rehab stints.
But, he adds, “She’s a grown woman, so she needs to make her own decisions. I can’t hold her hand along the way, and she doesn’t expect me to do that. [If I did,] I would be enabling her myself.”
A surprisingly candid Michael will be the first to admit that the Lohan clan has had some tumultuous years.
Lindsay’s more recent antics include a leaked sex list, public Hollywood scoldings for skipping out on responsibilities and the movie debacle that was “The Canyons.” The family matriarch, Dina Lohan, was arrested for drunk driving in Oyster Bay last September.
And Lindsay’s father, Michael Lohan? Over the last two decades, he’s been arrested for everything from insider trading and a DUI to attempted assault and domestic violence.
And yet — despite rumors that Michael was considering changing his name — he’s sticking with it. “I’m incredibly proud of it. I think it’s a blessing . . . It’s brought me to where [I am] today.”
He even appears to be on his way to restoring some splendor to the family moniker.
This summer, Michael, Lindsay and three other co-founders started a shopping app called Vigme, which lets users shop influencers’ and celebrities’ virtual closets, chock-full of items that they currently own and/or want. For each product purchased, a percentage of the sale goes back to said influencer (or a charity, if the person chooses).
Lindsay will participate on Vigme by posting her recent purchases and wish-list items.
Michael, who is still raising the $250,000 seed capital and hopes to launch the app in early 2015, says the project is a perfect fit for his clothes-obsessed sister, who “wakes up and shops as it is.”
But in true Lohan fashion, the second you wake up, drama ensues.
I like to weed out the good and the bad people . . . and make sure that the people around her know that she has a much stronger support group.
- Michael Lohan Jr. on watching out for his big sister, Lindsay
Michael and Lindsay are being sued by tech entrepreneur Fima Potik, who recruited the Lohan siblings last year to work on his shopping startup, Spotted Friend, only to have them allegedly rip off his idea.
According to Potik’s attorney: “In 2014, after being members of the company for over a year, without any warning, the Lohans . . . launched a competing company and improperly took proprietary information and intellectual property from Spotted Friend to start the new business . . . We intend to take all action necessary.”
Michael’s lawyer says that the suit has no merit; Michael says, “It’s a non-issue,” but he refuses to comment further.
He just wants to focus on the business, not the gossip.
After all, this is a guy who — amid his sister’s infamous slip-ups — kept a meticulous Excel spreadsheet of roommate expenses while he was living in a five-guy bachelor pad in FiDi for three years.
“He was the father of the house,” says Chris Roth, 27, a Vigme co-founder and former roommate of Michael’s.
“It’s ridiculous. I don’t know how many columns it was. It went into triple-M,” admits Michael, sporting a Patek Philippe watch on one wrist and a scar bandage from a soccer injury on another (he plays on a recreational NYC soccer league).
But this October, the Excel spreadsheets got scrapped after Michael moved into a Gramercy pad with his girlfriend of nearly eight years, college sweetheart Nina Ginsberg, an international account executive at Nicole Miller.
Not that he’s lost his Type A mentality.
“Even when I’m buying toilet paper [on Amazon] I make sure that 95 percent of the people enjoyed the experience of that toilet paper.”
Michael’s always been the most responsible of the Lohans.
He grew up in Merrick, LI, with his mother, father, Lindsay and two younger siblings, 20-year-old Ali, a model, and 18-year-old Cody, a college freshman. (Dina and Michael Sr. divorced in 2007; Michael says his once-estranged dad has “gotten much better. He and I talk pretty regularly, so long as he respects staying away from the media and does right by me.”)
The Lohan lad buckled down on his schoolwork and sports while the gossip surrounding his “Mean Girls” sister spiraled.
“That was hard when he was younger in school, protecting his sister and getting heckled by lacrosse players from other teams on the field,” Dina Lohan tells The Post.
Initially, Michael, who is 18 months younger than Lindsay, took a page from his movie-star sibling and gave showbiz a whirl. He appeared in her 1998 flick “Parent Trap” and was a Ford model as a kid.
But the techie says we can officially “write off” his acting career.
“I don’t like being at the forefront,” explains Michael. “It’s not really my cup of tea.”
(His mother, Dina, remains optimistic that her son will eventually pursue acting: “You never know. He studied with Harold Guskin in the city.”)
After graduating from Ithaca in 2010, where he studied finance and economics and played varsity lacrosse, Michael dabbled in entertainment marketing for one year before joining the team at FunBars, which owns watering holes throughout the city. He headed up corporate events for the hospitality group.
In 2012, Michael became the strategic advisor for the karaoke app Just Sing It, for which his sister also shilled, before moving on to Vigme.
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Michael says Lindsay is “very hands-on” with the shopping app despite being in London, where she’s performing in David Mamet’s play “Speed-the-Plow.”
And even though his troubled sister is thousands of miles away, Michael’s confident that Lindsay’s bad-girl days are in the past.
“It was heart-wrenching,” he says of Lindsay’s rehab stints.
“Each rehab she was in, the family visited,” Michael continues. “It’s very personal. I’ll leave it at that. You learn things about each other. You learn things about yourself. You clear the air in the sessions and get a lot of things off your chest.
“There were lots of tissues,” he adds.
While Michael says “genetically, [alcohol] is an issue for Lindsay,” he thinks his sister now “has the tools necessary to make the right decisions.”
The tools . . . and Oprah.
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The TV goddess may not have given Lindsay a car, but she has given the actress hope, according to the Vigme CEO.
Oprah produced a documentary series revolving around Lindsay’s road to recovery for the OWN Network that aired this spring.
Since then, Michael says the two talk every week, and The Big O even came out to London to watch Lindsay perform.
“She’s been life-changing for Lindsay,” he says.
And a pretty great perk for Michael himself.
“She gave me a hug once,” he reminisces. “And that was awesome.”