Lindsay Lohan has signed on for her first lead role since 2009 after being cast as Elizabeth Taylor in Liz and Dick, an account of Taylor's tempestuous relationship with Richard Burton.

The troubled actor was forced to drop out of her last high-profile role, as Linda Lovelace in the biopic Inferno, after breaking probation conditions by missing a mandatory progress hearing relating to a 2007 DUI conviction; instead, she attended a promotional event at the 2010 Cannes film festival.

Lohan said: "I am very honored to have been asked to play this role."

Since starring as a woman who fakes her pregnancy in Labor Pains in 2009, Lohan has only been seen on screen in a small part in the Robert Rodriguez action movie Machete. Liz and Dick, however, is unlikely to make it to cinemas as it has been commissioned by the Lifetime network, which specialises in women-oriented TV dramas.

UK film-maker Chris Monger (The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain) is writing the script, but no director has yet been announced.