Nicole Evangeline Lilly is a Canadian actress and children's book author. She is best known
for her role as Kate Austen in ABC's Lost, a role for which she won multiple Saturn Awards
and Teen Choice Awards and a Golden Globe nomination. Lilly is also known for her roles
in the feature films Afterwards, The Hurt Locker, and Real Steel. Lilly appeared in
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and will appear in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five
Armies, the final film in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit trilogy.
Personal life Evangeline Lilly was born in Fort Saskatchewan,
Alberta, and raised in British Columbia by her mother and her father, a produce manager.
She graduated from W. J. Mouat Secondary School in Abbotsford, British Columbia, where she
played soccer and was vice president of the student council. She speaks French fluently.
While in college, Lilly worked as a flight attendant for Royal Airlines, as a waitress,
and as a mechanic to pay for her tuition. Her acting career began when she was discovered
walking the streets of Kelowna, British Columbia, by a Ford Modeling Agency agent. Lilly took
the card but did not immediately pursue acting. She eventually called and the agency landed
her several roles in commercials and non-speaking parts in the TV shows Smallville and Kingdom
Hospital and the film The Lizzie McGuire Movie. On December 20, 2006, an electrical problem
set fire to Lilly's house in Kailua, Hawaii, destroying the house and all of her possessions
while she was on the set of Lost. Though she lost all she owned, Lilly said the fire "was
almost liberating. I'm in no hurry to clutter up my life again."
Lilly was previously married to Canadian hockey player Murray Hone. From 2004 to 2009, she
dated Lost co-star Dominic Monaghan. She had her first child, a son named Kahekili, with
partner Norman Kali in Hawaii in May 2011. Philanthropy
Lilly grew up Christian and her faith influenced her decision to take part in a three-week
mission trip to the Philippines when she was 18. Her interest in humanitarian causes and
global development led her to major in International Relations at the University of British Columbia.
Lilly continues to work with nonprofits such as the GO Campaign. In 2009, Lilly auctioned
off custom lingerie in support of Task Brasil, "a non-profit organization dedicated to helping
the lost street children of Brazil by providing them secure housing." In 2010, she auctioned
off three lunches in Vancouver, Honolulu, and Los Angeles to help widows and orphans
in Rwanda, a country Lilly has made numerous trips to as part of her charity work. In 2012
Lilly auctioned off a Hawaiian hike to raise money for Sierra Club.
After shooting the final episode of Lost, Lilly said she was considering taking a break
from acting to focus on her charity and humanitarian efforts. She told Vulture, "I consider acting
a day job — it's not my dream; it's not my be-all, end-all." She has claimed to use
her actress earnings to further her humanitarian efforts, not the other way around.
Career
Television Lilly was encouraged to try out for Lost by
a friend and she did not expect to get cast. As the secrecy campaign made the auditioning
actors not have access to the full script, reading short scenes and only knowing the
basic premise of people surviving a plane crash on a tropical island - which reminded
Lilly of The Blue Lagoon - she even thought Lost would "at best be a mediocre TV show".
Around 75 women auditioned for the part of Kate Austen. Damon Lindelof, writer and co-creator,
said he and J. J. Abrams, executive producer and co-creator, "were fast-forwarding through
a tape, and he saw her and said, 'That's the girl.'" The character almost had to be recast,
as Lilly had trouble acquiring a work visa to enter the United States. Her application
was finally accepted after nearly 20 tries and she arrived in Hawaii for filming one
day late. Lost ran for six seasons, airing from 2004–2010.
It was one of the top shows on ABC's primetime schedule during its run, won a Golden Globe
and 11 Prime Time Emmy Awards including best drama in 2005, and was ranked the top-rated
TV show of the decade by IMDB. Lilly appeared in 116 of the show's 121 episodes,
and her character, Kate Austen, was the show's female lead. Entertainment Weekly voted Lilly
one of its "Breakout Stars of 2004." In 2006, she was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best
Lead Actress-Drama. Robert Bianco of USA Today praised Lilly's performance in "Eggtown,"
saying that it was almost worthy of a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. In 2007, Lilly's portrayal
was voted #1 Sexiest Woman on Television by TV Guide and made FHM's Top Sexiest.
Action figures of Lilly's Lost character were released during the holiday season of 2006.
Film In 2008, Lilly starred in the Academy Award-winning
film The Hurt Locker. She and the rest of the cast won the Gotham Award for Best Ensemble
Cast and the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Ensemble. Lilly
followed her role in The Hurt Locker with a leading part opposite John Malkovich in
Afterwards, a psychological thriller directed by Gilles Bourdos.
In 2010, Lilly stated her intention to focus on children's book writing and on feature
film roles. On May 11, 2010, Lilly announced on The View that she places writing and being
a mother as top priorities, but she likes acting as a day job and she will continue
acting when possible. In 2011, Lilly appeared as Bailey Tallet in
Real Steel alongside Hugh Jackman. Despite having turned down a number of movie offers,
she traveled to Los Angeles to acquire the part a few days after director Shawn Levy
sent her the script. Levy said he cast her because Lilly is "magnificent to look at,
she's soulful, and she's sexy with Hugh. I needed someone who you believed had grown
up in a man's world. Bailey needed to have a strength and a toughness that was not at
the expense of her being womanly." In 2012, Lilly was cast to play the role of
the Mirkwood elf Tauriel in Peter Jackson's three-part adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's
The Hobbit. The character, which does not appear in the original book by Tolkien, was
created by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh as the head of the Elven guard who, like Legolas,
wields a bow and two daggers as weapons. Lilly, who had been a fan of Tolkien's books since
she was 13, underwent training for swordplay and archery, as well as in the Elvish language
for the role. In March 2014, Lilly was cast in a female lead role of Hope Van Dyne in
upcoming superhero film Ant-Man. Literature
In June 2010, Lilly announced on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson that she would
be writing a children's book, reciting some of the story from the book to Ferguson on
the show. On July 18, 2013, Lilly debuted the book,
entitled The Squickerwonkers. The release event was held at the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con
International, where she attended a book signing for the work in addition to providing a reading
performance. Lilly has stated that the idea for the book first came to her when she was
fourteen years old. The foreword to the book was written by director Peter Jackson. She
described the work as "a graphic [book] series designed for children", stating that the book
is about a young girl who joins a group of characters she described as "this family,
the Squickerwonkers, and they're strange outcasts who all have very particular vices". She has
stated that future books will each reveal a new Squickerwonker character and unique
vice, which will eventually become the undoing of the character. The illustrator for the
book is Johnny Fraser-Allen of Weta Workshop, a New Zealand-based concept design firm that
worked on films, including The Hobbit. Lilly stated that the goal was to "make a book that
we would like to have read as children and that we would still enjoy as adults today".
Filmography Other awards
Advertising References
External links Evangeline Lilly at the Internet Movie Database
Evangeline Lilly's homepage Evangeline Lilly on Twitter