Amanda Bynes Placed Under Psychiatric Hold After Starting a Fire in California Neighborhood

Two years after announcing her retirement, the 26-year-old tweeted about her new lilac hair. The look sparked a tabloid frenzy when it was featured in a mug shot after an April DUI arrest. As her legal troubles mount and her agent, publicist and lawyer have dropped her.

The troubled 27-year-old actress was taken to a hospital after setting a small blaze outside a residence in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Amanda Bynes is being held at a hospital for mental evaluation after setting a small fire Monday evening outside a home in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

The fire department was called around 8:45 p.m. when the 27-year-old actress, whose erratic behavior has spurred several run-ins with the law in recent months, sparked the fire in the driveway area of the single-family residence, whose inhabitants have no association or relationship with Bynes, Sgt. Eric Buschow of the Ventura County Sheriff's Department told The Hollywood Reporter.

PHOTOS: Amanda Bynes' Career: From Child Star to Troubled Adult

When police arrived, "deputies spoke with her and interviewed her and determined that she met the criteria of a 5150," Buschow said Tuesday, identifying the section of the California Welfare and Institutions Code that places a person under 72-hour involuntary psychiatric hold after they "make statements that they're either a danger to themselves or others, or gravely disabled."

Buschow declined to name the hospital where Bynes was transferred.

This was "not a deliberate attempt to set a house on fire" and there was no damage to the home, he said. Otherwise, Bynes would be facing arson charges.

As she transitioned into adulthood, the former child star struggled to break free from her squeaky-clean image, multiple sources told The Hollywood Reporter in October.

"Everybody had her as a goody-goody. She couldn't break out of that genre," said an agency executive who was present at meetings with the ex-Nickelodeon star, who was much-coveted for representation after her string of big-screen successes in such films as 2007's Hairspray.

"Her frustration was, 'I could have played this role, I could have played that role. I'm not getting the Lindsay Lohan roles,'" added the exec.

Several years later, echoing Lohan's own descent into notoriety, Bynes has become notorious for her bizarre behavior. Her legal woes began in April 2012 when she was arrested for drunk driving and then, only days later, a hit-and-run. She was charged with another hit-and-run several months after the first. By September of last year, she had added being tossed out of an Equinox gym in West Hollywood for removing her shirt and exercising in a strapless push-up bra, as well as locking herself in New York City's Little Cupcake Bakeshop's bathroom for half an hour, to her list of newsworthy incidents.

In New York, Bynes courted more media attention with her May arrest for reckless endangerment, tampering with evidence and criminal possession of marijuana. Police had been called to her apartment on a tip that she had been smoking pot; when they arrived, she threw her bong out of the window, calling it a "vase."

Afterward, she began picking fights on Twitter, referring to a number of stars including Rihanna as "ugly," and also used the social-media platform to rail against the police, give updates on her plans to alter her face with plastic surgery, and reveal her career ambitions to become a rapper.

E-mail: Erin.Carlson@THR.com

Twitter: @ErinLCarlson