US judge praises Lohan as probation ends

The 25-year-old actress thanked judge Stephanie Sautner — whom she has seen repeatedly over the last year or two as she battled to get her life back on track — saying: “What you’ve done has really opened a lot of doors for me.”

“She has done everything that this court has asked of her,” said Sautner, adding that she did not expected to see the actress back before her again, despite leaving one informal probation sentence in place.

“You need to live your life in a more mature way, stop the nightclubbing, and focus on the work,” she added, saying: “I know it’s hard when people are following you all over the place... but that’s the life you chose.”

Lohan — the promising child star of hit Disney movies “The Parent Trap” and “Freaky Friday” — is well known for her hard partying and has faced a series of legal tangles over the years.

She was sentenced to 35 days of house detention last May as part of a plea bargain over the alleged theft of a $2,500 necklace from a jewelry shop near her home in Venice Beach.

In November Lohan spent five hours in prison after being sentenced to a 30-day stretch for breaching probation on previous offenses including a 2007 drug and drunk driving misdemeanor.

In court Thursday, the judge lifted completely Lohan’s probation for the 2007 drunk driving case, and changed her formal probation for the necklace theft into informal probation.

That informal probation term ends in May 2014, but under its terms Lohan does not need to appear in court again as long as she does not commit a new offense.

The star was featured in a nude photo spread in the January/February issue of Playboy, for which she was reportedly paid nearly $1 million. Earlier this month she appeared on popular US sketch comedy show “Saturday Night Live.”