‘Uninsurable’ Lohan fired from Deep Throat role

A little-known Hollywood actress called Malin Akerman has won the dubious honour of portraying the notorious 1970s porn star Linda Lovelace in an upcoming biopic, Inferno, after Lindsay Lohan was dropped from the project.

Director Matthew Wilder said at the weekend that Lohan was "uninsurable". Her constant court appearance and rehab orders – she has to stay at the Betty Ford centre until January 3 – have also caused too many delays for the film-makers.

"We have stuck by Lindsay very patiently for a long time with a lot of love and support," Wilder told E! News. "Ultimately, the impossibility of insuring her - and some other issues - have made it impossible for us to go forward."

Linda Lovelace came to fame with her 1972 film Deep Throat in which she played a girl with a big appetite for fellatio. Despite – or, rather, because of – various bannings and obscenity cases, it made a fortune at the box office and from video sales. Lovelace later changed direction and became an anti-pornography campaigner before she died in a car crash in 2002.

Akerman, who at 32 is eight years older than Lohan, was born in Sweden and brought up in Toronto. She has had small parts in various rom-coms including the Katherine Heigl film 27 Dresses.

She has also run around decorously in a skintight outfit for the 2009 comic-book thriller Watchmen and done a Maxim cover shoot in the buff. But has any of this really prepared her for Inferno?

As the website Obsessedwithfilm puts it, the movie is a risky project, requiring her to throw semen on her face and have sex with a dog. "Akerman had been appearing in two to three movies per year, a steady working actress – one wonders if this is the project she should risk her reputation on?" ·