Actress Lindsay Lohan, who was in and out of rehab after two alcohol and cocaine-related arrests last year, is paying tribute to another famous actress who battled substance abuse: Marilyn Monroe.

This photo provided by New York magazine features Lindsay Lohan posing as Marilyn Monroe on the cover of the magazine's Feb. 25 issue.
(New York/Bert Stern/Associated Press)

Lohan, the 21-year-old star of Mean Girls and Disney's remakes of films like Freaky Friday and The Parent Trap, posed nude for photographer Bert Stern for a fashion spread in the current issue of New York magazine, which hit newsstands on Monday.

Stern's famed photo shoot with Monroe took place in 1962 at the Hotel Bel-Air shortly before her death from a drug overdose.

The iconic, gauzy Vogue magazine spread featured Monroe, nude but for some jewelry, posing behind a series of translucent scarves, sipping champagne as she lay among rumpled white bed linens.

Earlier this month, Stern and Lohan — wearing a blonde wig and little else — recreated the shoot.

"I didn't have to put much thought into it. I mean, Bert Stern? Doing a Marilyn shoot? When is that ever going to come up? It's really an honor," the actress says in the accompanying essay in the magazine.

Dubbing Monroe's death "tragic," Lohan said that it and other cases, like the recent accidental death of actor Heath Ledger by an overdose of prescription drugs, "are both prime examples of what this industry can do to someone."

In an interview Monday, Stern noted that Monroe and Lohan had similar problems with alcohol but, unlike the original shoot, there was no alcohol involved this time around.

He also said he found women like Lohan and other tabloid targets "interesting."

"They're girls that draw attention to their notoriety and their celebrity through their behaviour," Stern said.

With files from the Associated Press