Lohan gets new rehab plan ‘thanks to gossip site’

The actress Lindsay Lohan has narrowly avoided being sent to a rehab facility in California where the staff were promising to be tougher on her than on the average patient.

According to the American gossip site, TMZ.com, David Gates, the 'director of intake' at Morningside Recovery in Newport Beach, had pushed to get the actress sent to his establishment by telling a judge he would cut off communication between Lohan and the outside world.

However, the Morningside facility was not on a list of four centres recommended by the two pyschiatrists who examined Lohan on behalf of Judge Marsha Revel in Beverly Hills.

Following the posting of a report by TMZ on Sunday, claiming the judge was going against the advice of the two psychiatrists by opting for Morningside, Judge Revel apparently changed her mind and agreed to let Lohan go instead to the UCLA Medical Center, the facility the actress's doctors had always wished for.

News of the judge's change of heart came as Lohan was released early this morning from jail after serving only 13 days of her 90-day sentence for violating the terms of her probation, received for a 2007 drunk-driving conviction.

The star of Freaky Friday and Mean Girls served her time at the Lynwood women's prison in south Los Angeles in isolation because of her high profile. Despite reports from fellow inmates of special treatment, officials claim she was like any other prisoner, eating standard jail food and confined to a 12 ft by 8 ft cell.

Lohan was released early for good behaviour under a system designed to combat overcrowding in the busy Los Angeles jail system. But it will be some time yet before she tastes 'freedom'.

Somehow avoiding waiting photographers, she was taken straight from the jail by police car to the UCLA facility where she is due to spend 90 days in rehab, being treated for methamphetamine addiction and bipolar disorder.

The rehab order delays the start of filming on her next project. She is will play the lead in a biopic about the porn actress Linda Lovelace, star of the notorious 1972 film Deep Throat. ·