Nervous Lindsay Lohan turned down dinner invite from Liz Taylor

Lindsay Lohan missed out on the chance to meet Dame Elizabeth Taylor because she was "too nervous" to join the late legend for dinner.

The Mean Girls actress has previously told how she was gifted with a ring from Taylor shortly before her passing last year (11) and she treasured the jewelry and the handwritten note that accompanied it during her film shoot for new TV movie Liz & Dick.

Now Lohan reveals she was also invited to dine with the Cleopatra icon but she politely declined - and it's a decision she will always regret.

Lohan tells U.S talk show host Jay Leno, "She had actually sent me a ring once and invited me to dinner, but I was genuinely just too nervous..."

The 26 year old portrays Taylor in the new Lifetime movie, about the icon's tumultuous relationship with Richard Burton, and she had a little extra insight into the private life of her Hollywood idol thanks to the Dame's personal nurse.

She explains, "My entertainment lawyer, he knows the nurse that was with her for about seven/eight years, so I became good friends with her and she was on set most of the days I was working and she actually gave me one of Elizabeth's furs, which was nice of her. It was nice to have the inside things that I didn't know, that when she was home in bed she would karaoke sometimes to (the radio). It's the small details."

And Lohan claims the nurse was so stunned by the actress' likeness to Taylor, she was moved to tears by her performance.

Lohan says, "When she came to set, you know I get aged in the movie, so when I had a different look she actually started to tear up and she said, 'You look just like her and you sound just like her.' That was a really big compliment."

However, Lohan's critics have not been so kind - experts have panned the project days before its big TV premiere this Sunday (25Nov12).