Actress Lindsay Lohan's publicist fired back at the media on Thursday, saying journalists had crossed a line by mocking a heartfelt letter the screen star wrote following director Robert Altman's death last week.

Spokeswoman Leslie Sloane said the note -- which one columnist suggested was composed by Lohan on "one of her legendary party benders" -- was instead dashed off by the distraught 20-year-old actress on a Blackberry, moments after she learned Altman had died.

Altman, who died on November 20 at age 81, directed Lohan in the last film of his career, "A Prairie Home Companion."

"Here was a girl who found something special in this man that she felt so close to," Sloane said. "And she was completely shocked and blown away that he just died. It was written very quickly and it was from the heart."

Lohan titled her November 21 e-mail "Dead is hard, Life is much easier," a quote she attributes to actor Jack Nicholson. In it, she sent condolences to Altman's family, adding, "I feel as I've just had the wind knocked out of me."

The film star, who is famously estranged from her father, also describes Altman as "the closest thing to my father and grandfather that I really do believe I've had in several years."

Days after the missive was made public, Los Angeles Times columnist Patt Morrison ridiculed it on a Web site as "alarmingly incoherent," apparently referring to misspellings and grammatical errors by Lohan, and wrote that Altman himself might find it "comedic."

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