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.
