Evangeline Lilly
Evangeline Lilly
Nicole Evangeline Lilly is a Canadian actress and author. She won a Screen Actors Guild Award and received a Golden Globe nomination for her role as Kate Austen in the ABC series Lost. She is also known for her roles in films such as the psychological thriller Afterwards, the war film The Hurt Locker, and the sci-fi sports drama film Real Steel. She played an Elf, Tauriel, in the fantasy adventure series The Hobbit and Hope van Dyne in the...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionTV Actress
Date of Birth3 August 1979
CityFort Saskatchewan, Canada
CountryCanada
I haven't sat down and memorized the language of Elvish, and anyone who does that is crazy!
You can't have a movie with a group of people that are significant players in the story, that push forward the plot, without introducing at least one or two of them.
I got called and was told, "We'd like you to do The Hobbit", which was my favorite of all of them when I was a kid - "And we want you to play a character that's not in the books", I gulped and hesitated, but then I went, "These guys know this world, and they represent this world so well, that I actually think they've earned the right to have a little play."
I was a die-hard fan of these books [The Hobbit] before the films ever came out. And when I say die-hard, I wasn't the person who could speak Elvish, but I really loved them.
I just like short hair on women, I think it's cool. And I have wanted to cut my hair for very many years, but being on contract with a television show for six years prevents you from doing that, and then being on contract with a cosmetic endorsement campaign prevents you from doing that again. So for eight years, I've had to have long, flowing locks. And I was just so sick and tired of long, flowing locks, so I chopped them.
That is the greatest source of my anxiety on this film [The Hobbit], is that I'm going to be lynched.
I have these huge, pointed ears. They're like three times the size of Orlando Bloom's ears. And I think he has ear envy, I love my ears.
One of the great pleasures of working in Middle Earth is you get to be another being.
My character is different from all of the Elves you've met before, in that she's really young. And I keep telling journalists this because I've really focused on that in my performance. I'm trying to distinguish her from all of these incredibly sage and wise Elves that have lived for thousands of years.
I don't know if any of you feel this way, but it's like eventually, you see a woman come on screen and you go, "Oh, thank God!" You just sort of need a break from all this testosterone, which happened, I think, in one of my films, The Hurt Locker. I was in it for like five minutes, and people were like, "You were in that movie!" And I was like, "Well, kind of." And they were like, "No, you were!" 'Cause they needed a woman!
If you watch a film from beginning to end, with no women in it, it's really difficult.
I think doing a female Elf in the Woodland realm was a bit safer, because we haven't met one of those yet.
I wasn't actually going to see the original film [Lord of the Ring], because I didn't think it was possible that a film could represent the books appropriately. So I was protesting, and I wasn't going to see them. And then my family all took a jaunt together, the entire family, to see the movies, and were like, "What, you're just going to stay home?" So I saw the movies and was thoroughly impressed that Peter Jackson managed to make my vision of the book come to life, as well as my sister's and my father's, and my aunt's and my uncle's, everyone's.
When I am doing things around the house - when I'm decorating, setting up furniture, putting out a vase of flowers, lighting my candles, my mind is always thinking, "What do I need to do to make this space peaceful and restful and comfortable so that when people walk into it, aesthetically they're heightened and enlightened?"