Evangeline Lilly

Nicole Evangeline Lilly (born 3 August 1979) is a Canadian actress and author from Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta. She gained popular acclaim for her first leading role as Kate Austen in the ABC series Lost (2004–2010), which garnered her a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Drama Series and won her a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2008, she starred as Connie James in the Academy Award–winning war film The Hurt Locker (2008) and followed it with a role in the science fiction film Real Steel (2011).

Lilly starred as Tauriel in The Hobbit film series, appearing in The Desolation of Smaug (2013) and The Battle of the Five Armies (2014). Since 2015, she has portrayed Hope van Dyne / Wasp in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, starring in Ant-Man (2015), Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018), and Avengers: Endgame (2019). She is set to reprise the role in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023).

Lilly is also the author of the ongoing children's book series The Squickerwonkers (2013–present), which is planned to include two nine-book series.

Early life

Lilly was born in Fort Saskatchewan in Alberta on 3 August 1979. She was raised in British Columbia by her mother, a produce manager, and her father, a home economics teacher. She has both an older sister and a younger sister.

Lilly graduated from W. J. Mouat Secondary School in Abbotsford, British Columbia; she played soccer and was vice president of the student council. In university, she was a waitress, did "oil changes and grease jobs on big rig trucks", and was a flight attendant for Royal Airlines to pay for her tuition. Her interest in humanitarian causes and world development led her to major in International Relations at the University of British Columbia.

Career

Television

Lilly's acting career began when she was discovered by a Ford Modelling Agency agent while passing the time in Kelowna, British Columbia. She took the agent's business 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. She was also on a video game news and review show on the gaming television channel G4TV.

Lost

Lilly was encouraged by a friend to audition for ABC's Lost and did not expect to be cast. The secrecy campaign meant auditioning actors could not see the full script, could read only short scenes, and knew only the basic premise of people surviving a plane crash on a tropical island. It reminded Lilly of The Blue Lagoon, and she thought Lost would "at best be a mediocre TV show".

Around 75 women auditioned for the part of Kate Austen. Writer and co-creator Damon Lindelof said that he and executive producer and co-creator J. J. Abrams "...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, from 2004 to 2010. It was one of ABC's top primetime shows, winning one Golden Globe Award and ten Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series in 2005, and was ranked the top-rated TV show of the decade by IMDb.

Lilly, who was from 25 to 31 years of age during the show's run, appeared in 108 of 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 Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama.

Robert Bianco of USA Today praised Lilly's performance in the episode "Eggtown", saying it was almost worthy of a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series nomination. In 2007, her portrayal was voted #1 Sexiest Woman on Television by TV Guide and made FHM's Top Sexiest.

Evangeline was voted one of People Magazine's '50 Most Beautiful People'. 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 says she uses her high-profile roles to further her humanitarian efforts, not to achieve stardom.

Film

In 2008, Lilly appeared in the Academy Award-winning film The Hurt Locker. She and the cast won the Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Ensemble Cast and the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Ensemble. She followed this role with a leading part in psychological thriller film Afterwards. In 2010, she stated her intention to focus on children's book writing and feature film roles.

On 11 May 2010, Lilly announced on The View that writing and being a mother were her top priorities, but that she liked acting as a "day job" and would continue it when possible. She took a short retirement that year and was not in contact with Hollywood. In 2011 she appeared as Bailey Tallet in Real Steel. Despite turning down a number of film offers, she travelled to Los Angeles to get the part after director Shawn Levy sent her the script. Levy said: "She's magnificent to look at, she's soulful, and she's sexy. 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 as 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 wields a bow and two daggers as weapons. Lilly, a fan of Tolkien's books since she was 13, underwent training for swordplay and archery for the role, and in the Elvish language. In 2015, she played Hope van Dyne / Wasp in the superhero film Ant-Man, and later reprised the role in Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019).

She will star with Armie Hammer and Gary Oldman in Crisis, directed by Nicholas Jarecki.

Literature

In June 2010, Lilly announced on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson that she would be writing a children's book and recited several excerpts. She has stated that her literary inspirations are children's book authors such as Roald Dahl and Edward Gorey.

On 18 July 2013, Lilly debuted the book, titled The Squickerwonkers. The release event was held at the San Diego Comic-Con, 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 14 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".

Lilly 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".

Personal life

On 20 December 2006, an electrical problem set fire to her house in Kailua, Hawaii, destroying the house and all of her possessions while she was on the set of Lost. Though she lost all of her belongings, she said that the fire "was almost liberating, I'm in no hurry to clutter up my life again."

Lilly was married to Murray Hone from 2003 to 2004. She was also in a relationship with her Lost co-star Dominic Monaghan from 2004 to 2007. In 2010, Lilly began a long-term relationship with Norman Kali. She gave birth to their first child, a son, in 2011. Their second child, another son, was born in October 2015.

She is a Christian, and she has stated that her religion was what influenced her to visit the Philippines at age 18.

Lilly works with non profits 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 she has made numerous trips to as part of her charity work. Afterwards, in 2012, Lilly auctioned off a Hawaiian hike to raise money for the Sierra Club.

On 16 March 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lilly refused to self-quarantine and said it was "#businessasusual" on Instagram and that she values freedom over her life, garnering criticism. On 26 March, Lilly apologized for her comments, calling them "dismissive, arrogant and cryptic". Lilly presently lives with her father, who has stage 4 leukemia. On 27 January 2022 Lilly posted a photo on Instagram showing that she took part in a march against vaccine mandates in DC, saying that 'nobody should ever be forced to inject their body with anything, against their will'.

Filmography

Key

Denotes productions that have not yet been released

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2003	Stealing Sinatra	Model in Commercial	Uncredited
	The Lizzie McGuire Movie	Police Officer
	Freddy vs. Jason	School Student Next to Locker
2004	White Chicks	Party Guest
2005	The Long Weekend	Simone
2008	The Hurt Locker	Connie James
	Afterwards	Claire	French title: Et après
2011	Real Steel	Bailey Tallet
2013	The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug	Tauriel
2014	The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
2015	Ant-Man	Hope van Dyne
2017	Little Evil	Samantha Bloom
2018	Ant-Man and the Wasp	Hope van Dyne / Wasp
2019	Avengers: Endgame
2021	Crisis	Claire Reimann
	South of Heaven	Annie Ray
2023	Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania	Hope van Dyne / Wasp	Post-production

Television

Video games

Theme park attractions

Awards and nominations