Not many people think of Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta as a hotbed for Hollywood talent, but that didn’t stop Evangeline Lilly from rising to the top - and taking an unconventional path along the way. Evangeline grew up all over the world traveling with her Christian missionary family, before settling down in Vancouver to study International Relations at UBC. A chance encounter led to a modeling career, which in turn created a few acting opportunities and in 2004 Evangeline landed the gig of a lifetime, starring as ‘Kate’ on J.J. Abrams epic TV series, “Lost”. Since then there’s been no looking back. Kate has been nominated for a Golden Globe and is now starring opposite John Malkovich in the new film “Afterwards”.
See the video at http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/videos.html?id=859945977
Evangeline Lilly will appear on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos
September 17 on CBC TV
http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/upcoming.php
Evangeline Lilly, star of the hit TV series ‘Lost,’ returns home to Canada with not one but two films at the 2008 Toronto Film Festival.
By Karl Rozemeyer
Evangeline Lilly’s starring role in the addictive TV drama Lost has brought many opportunities to her door, but since the series began in 2004, the former model has remained choosy when it comes to movie scripts. However, this year the native Canadian returned to the Great White North for the Toronto International Film Festival with not one but two films.
The first film is The Hurt Locker, a violent drama about a bomb squad in Iraq directed by Kathryn Bigelow that was snapped up by Summit Entertainment during the fest. Lilly took the cameo part because of her instant rapport with the famous director. Lilly is taking on her first starring role in the indie thriller Afterwards, which also premiered at TIFF. Adapted for the screen by director Gilles Bourdos and Michel Spinosa from the novel by Guillaume Musso, Afterwards is the story of a couple, Nathan and Claire, who lost one of their children to sudden death syndrome. Claire (Lilly) lives alone with their remaining child and is estranged from Nathan (played by French breakout actor Romain Duris, star of The Beat That Skipped My Heart and Dans Paris), who’s a high-powered lawyer in New York City. Things take a turn for the strange when he meets Dr. Kay (John Malkovich), a mysterious man who claims he is a "messenger" who can predict when people are going to die. According to Dr. Kay, Nathan’s life was spared as a child because he still has much unfinished work to do.
From a quiet room overlooking a sun-dappled garden in Toronto, a radiant Evangeline Lilly talks exclusively with Premiere about why she chose to avoid many of the opportunities afforded her by the success of Lost, how she has struggled to shed the persona of her character Kate, and why she considers herself an oddball.
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TORONTO — Evangeline Lilly has become a bona fide TV star playing a feisty castaway on “Lost” and has been at the Toronto International Film Festival this week talking up her starring role in the brooding new movie “Afterwards.”
The glamorous parts are a far cry from the actress’s most-hated career turn: a one-month stint as a flight attendant for now-defunct Royal Airlines.
“(It) was probably my least favourite job ever, and I’ve done some pretty awful jobs,” recalled Lilly.
“I remember the first time we had to do (the demonstration) where you point to the exit signs and do the gas mask thing. … I got the gas mask caught in my hair. So they continued on with the announcement and I (was) trying to untangle my hair.”
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GAYLE MACDONALD
September 10, 2008
Before agreeing to a small cameo in Kathryn Bigelow’s gut-wrenching film The Hurt Locker, Canadian actress Evangeline Lilly picked up the phone and dialled the director’s Los Angeles home. The two women talked for hours - about the Iraq war (grittily explored in this movie), politics and life in general.
A deeply spiritual woman who was raised Baptist and Mennonite, Lilly says she made the call because she had to make sure the tone of the film was in sync with her own moral compass.
“I love the idea of doing this film,” said Lilly, a self-confessed tomboy who is nevertheless dressed demurely in a black dress and white wool coat. “But I told her what I fear is that you and I are in any way on a different page when it comes to our feelings toward this war. I don’t want to be part of propaganda that I can’t stand behind. So we talked for hours,” says the actress, who was born in the small prairie town of Fort Saskatchewan but grew up in British Columbia.
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