Are Lost co-stars Evangeline Lilly and Dominic Monaghan planning a wedding? Maybe so but it looks like Kate, Evangeline’s character on Lost, is getting hitched before Evi & Dom could both say ‘I do!’ And yes, that is Miss Lilly brushing her teeth in the inset… you may now kiss the bride!
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"There’s a lot of that Christian good girl in her," says Jorge Garcia, who plays Lost’s rotund slacker, Hurley, "but sometimes certain things come out of her mouth. She’s got the devil mixed in there too." "She has an absolutely filthy, filthy mouth," says Bryan Burk, a Lost executive producer. "She can swear like a sailor and dress provocatively, but that doesn’t reflect her beliefs. She’s a walking oxymoron." ¶ On her fridge a few feet away hangp a snapshot of her in Paris with Dominic Monaghan, who plays Lost’s junkie British rocker, Charlie. Lilly has been photographed in every stage of canoodle with the actor, who is best known for donning hairy feet to play the hobbit Merry in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Superficially, they’re oddly matched. ¶ And of course, everyone wants to know how naked Lost’s Bible girl is willing to get. There’s that magazine photo shoot that made her weep when she saw it. "It was too sexy for me," Evangeline Lilly says. "It crossed my line." Though producers have been conscious of her request to keep skin shots to a minimum, thanks to a new bra she’s been wearing on the show, Matthew Fox has dubbed her Cleavie.
CLEAVIE! Ha ha ha. Read the full Evangeline Lilly in Elle May 2006 article after the jump, more pictures in the gallery. Check it out, it’s definitely an interesting read!
It’s just after 8 A.M. on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, and the 26-year-old actress Evangeline Lilly pads into her kitchen in a pair of terry-cloth slippers and puts a kettle on the stove. She’s been up for hours, having just taken the puddle jumper from Kauai, where she spent the last two days climbing trees and chasing toads for ELLE’s photo shoot. Even the big Starbucks latte she drank earlier hasn’t erased the puffiness around her eyes. She drops a couple of Irish breakfast tea bags into mismatched earthenware mugs, plunks down at her kitchen table, and apologizes. "I’m so hopped up on caffeine right now," she says almost regally, suggesting there have been elocution lessons in her past. "It’s very uncouth of me, but that’s what I’m doing."
In the realm of Hollywood excess, caffeine jitters probably wouldn’t set off any couth alarms. Exiting the bathroom with a noticeable ring of powder around your nostrils might not even qualify as bad form anymore. It also would have been well within the realm of couth for Lilly to have let me fend for myself finding her bungalow, nicked away in the suburban town of Kailua, rather than calling before I left New York with specific driving directions from my Waikiki hotel through the verdant Koolau Mountain range. She even advised me to pack a sweater. This is the kind of practicality that you might expect from your nana, not the breakout female star of the goliath series that won six Emmys and helped put ABC back on top in the ratings war. But if you know anything about Lilly’s history, none of this will surprise you. Her story could be seen as a Hollywood take on the Greystoke legend. Until she was cast in Lost, her most notable speaking role had been in a commercial for a cheesy Canadian chat line; she had no idea that the word pilot meant anything other than a guy who flies a plane. When asked once what item she would take if marooned on a deserted island, the former Sunday school teacher didn’t answer a gun, a lighter, or a Whole Foods. She said, "My Bible." She spent her hiatus after wrapping the first season of Lost helping a friend doing missionary relief work in Rwanda.
So, predictably, this Sunday morning, everything about Lilly remains supercouth, almost churchy. New Age music plays softly on the stereo as she conducts a tour of the modest whitewash bungalow she shares with two women who have both done stand-in work for her on Lost. She evinces thrifty pride in pointing out the well-worn 70s-era brown leadier furniture she picked up at a Salvation Army when she arrived on the island two years ago, which imbues the place with a post-college-pad vibe. "I furnished my entire living room for about $300! Don’t you think it makes sense?" exclaims the woman who will soon make about $80,000 an episode, but still has no plans for redecoration or booting those roommates to the curb, even though one of them, she discovers, has polished off her milk without replacing it. At least there’s a water view, sort of. "There are rumors that it has flesh-eating disease in it," Lilly says, gazing at the muddy canal that passes behind her house. Hundreds of nasty-looking fish clamor at the surface. "But I know its not true because I’ve been completely immersed in it." Sweet girl, she even cautions me to mind my feet in the grass, since its dewy in the morning. Its all very proper, that is, until the second cup of tea. As she’s pouring hot water from the kettle, Lilly motions to the plate with the tea bags between us. "Do you want me to put your bag in?" she asks.
"I’ll put my bag in," I answer blandly. There is barely a beat before she opens her crystalline green eyes wide and her face explodes into a mischievous smile.
‘That’s what he said!" she says, unleashing a throaty laugh you’ll never hear in a million years on Lost.
Gulp.
Evangeline Lilly, perhaps because of the show she’s on, defies being taken at face value. Lost demands that viewers hone their paranoia to a needle point. Even the X-Files, which, in its day, acquired a similar brand of superloyal obsessive fans, seems quaint with its defining mantra, Trust no one. Lost’s defining mantra seems to be, Nothing is as it seems, and don’t even try to guess what the hell’s gping on here. The setup is straightforward: A jumbo jet en route from Sydney, Australia, to Los Angeles flies severely off course and breaks apart midair, dropping 48 surviving passengers on a seemingly deserted island. From there, it gets weird. There are other nonindigenous folks encamped on the island. They have guns, poor hygiene, and an unsettling habit of abducting children. There’s an underground bunker left behind by a scientific corporation which demands that its occupants punch a series of numbers into a computer every 108 minutes for God knows what reason. Oh, and there’s a resident polar bear. And even if you do watch the show, none of this makes any sense.
Neither, for that matter, does Lilly’s character, Kate Austen. At first blush, Kate is the picture of moral rectitude, a real good camper. She seldom complains and, despite not having much to do besides pick fruit and get abducted by the occasional armed horde, resists passing any of that free time horizontally with either of her gorgeous suitors.
Then we find out that precrash, Kate robbed a bank and killed at least one guy. This discovery might be actually less jarring than hearing Lilly-—who, a show producer attests, keeps a Bible with her at all times—-blithely flick a filthy double entendre into conversation over tea. "There’s a lot of that Christian good girl in her," says Jorge Garcia, who plays Lost’s rotund slacker, Hurley, "but sometimes certain things come out of her mouth. She’s got the devil mixed in there too."
"She has an absolutely filthy, filthy mouth," says Bryan Burk, a Lost executive producer. "She can swear like a sailor and dress provocatively, but that doesn’t reflect her beliefs. She’s a walking oxymoron."
‘There’s also the unsolved mystery of her romantic life. "If you ask me a question about love, relationships, or anything of that sort, the interview will be over. Over!" she says, smiling, but there’s a steeliness behind the declaration. On her fridge a few feet away hangp a snapshot of her in Paris with Dominic Monaghan, who plays Lost’s junkie British rocker, Charlie. Lilly has been photographed in every stage of canoodle with the actor, who is best known for donning hairy feet to play the hobbit Merry in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Superficially, they’re oddly matched. Even today, low on sleep, without a hint of makeup, hair clipped back, and a snug mustard T-shirt that says (inexplicably even to her) WHAT WOULD DIETER DO?, she’s gorgeous, her face at alternate moments conjuring Liv Tyler without the pillow lips and Lara Flynn Boyle without the Hollywood mileage. Hormonal teenage boys agree: She was No. 2 on Maxim’s Hot 100 list. Monaghan, though appealing in his way, probably doesn’t wait by the phone for People magazine to call during Sexiest Man Alive season. Gossip columns reported their engagement at the beginning of the year. Not before British tabloids also reported that when Lilly-bid adieu to Canada, she left behind a fellow named Murray Hone, an amateur hockey player she’d married the year before.
Neither Lilly nor Monaghan talk about their relationship, and her coworkers seem to have gotten the memo: "I don’t need to face the wrath of Evie," chuckles Garcia. Though Matthew Fox, who plays saintly doctor Jack, says he did sit Lilly down to discuss potential problems in getting cozy with a colleague.
"It was never a warning," Fox says. "It just needed to be said. I felt like it wasn’t something you’d want to jump into without [looking at] all the angles."
She got an early crash course in tuning out chatter. Nicole Evangeline Lilly was raised Baptist and Mennonite in Fort Saskatchewan, a tiny prairie town in Alberta that dips well below zero degrees in winter. Her dad was the produce manager at Safeway, and her mom tried to make ends meet by working the local Estee Lauder counter and operating a day care out of the house. It didn’t always work. "We lived on cabbage for a week at one point," Lilly says. They were poor every day except for Christmas; her father would take bank loans so he could go overboard for Lilly and her two sisters. Caroling started the day after Halloween; her older sister would throw up from excitement every Christmas Eve.
Puberty arrived late—at 16—and Lilly, who’d been a tomboy her whole life, became beautiful overnight. When I ask what her high school classmates would say about her, her face darkens. "If you polled them the year I graduated, they would have said that I was a slut," she says. "And the most I had ever done is French kiss. It was because of the way I looked. I was always the girl who hung out with the boys. What I didn’t realize was that after I hit puberty I was something different to the guys. They all wanted to get in my pants. They couldn’t, so they just said they did."
So ironically to those of us who grew up ugly as turnips, Lilly says she prayed for deliverance: "I spent many nights crying myself to sleep wishing I was ugly because of the way men leered and disrespected me, because they assumed things about my mental capacity or my physical willingness based on the way I look." The work world wasn’t much kinder. Lilly quit her job waiting tables at Earls, a trendy Canadian chain—which helped put her through the University of British Columbia, where she studied international relations—after being ogled one time too many. "I felt like a whore," she says. "You feel like they’re paying to stare at your ass when you’re walking away from the table."
Naturally, Lilly took to the notion of a career in show business much like a chicken would take to a hot bath in a fry-o-lator. "I avoided the industry for so long because I resent it for so many reasons," she says. "There was no way that my ideas about life and morality were going to coincide with that industry, so there was no point in even playing with fire." She only relented, she says, because doing commercials was an easier way to pay her tuition than, say, doing oil changes on big rigs, which, along with working as a flight attendant, a teachers aide, a camp counselor, a Sunday school teacher, and a waitress, was how she supported herself from the age of 15. She didn’t want to be an actress; she wanted to be a humanitarian. Although she made good money with the Ford Agency doing the telephone chat line commercial, she preferred hiding in the background, doing extra work on film shoots in Vancouver. (Remember her as that corpse on Kingdom Hospital?)
Then, a person she describes only as "a friend" gave her some enlightening advice, the kind you might get from, say, the man to whom you’re married. This friend told her she was afraid of facing her own success. "I bawled my eyes out on the spot," she says. "It triggered something. Ever since high school I had done things so people wouldn’t just respect me because of the way I looked. I decided, to hell with it. I’m going to pursue mediocrity, and I’m going to be so happy." She went on her first audition in January 2004. Six weeks later, in a development that doubtlessly drove scores of Hollywood starlets into therapy, Lilly was in Hawaii filming Lost. While fast-forwarding though her audition tape, the show’s cocreator J. J. Abrams had seen that ineffable something that had inspired him to cast relative unknowns Jennifer Garner and Keri Russell in Alias and Felicity. Says cocreator Damon Lindelof: "When J.J. said ‘Stop!’ and we saw Evie read the scene for the first time, we were all like, ‘Get that girl on a plane immediately!’
We’re driving around Lilly’s neighborhood in Kailua. Its not just the two of us; a little photo of Monaghan stares out from the dashboard of Lilly’s 2001 Ford Escape SUV. We stop at the bin by the elementary school where she drops off her recycling— Hawaii, despite its Eden-like appearance, is actually more polluted than you’d ever guess. Oahu has yet to adopt a comprehensive curbside recycling program, and the local Waimanalo Gulch landfill is dangerously close to capacity. The problems are visible even on the less populated North Shore, which doubles for Lost’s tropical isle. "We’re often in the most remote areas of the jungle," Lilly says. "You can’t see road, you can’t see people, and at almost every step, we stumble across an abandoned vehicle, beer cans, tires, or trash because people just dump it." Lilly resolved to help. When she turned 26, she dragged a recycling bin to the set and made on-set recycling her birthday wish.
That’s just the beginning; her dream of humanitarianism is closer than ever. She recently read a little primer in the form of an Audrey Hepburn biography. "Wow, that is the life I would kill to emulate," she says. "I actually feel like I’m more capable now of doing humanitarian work because I’m financially able to make a difference. You have to sacrifice something to get something. For me, fame is that sacrifice, because I never wanted it, and I still don’t. Its something I have to live with." Even on this little island—a neighborhood boy stole her favorite panties right off her clothesline; one night some drunk kids pulled into her driveway, beckoning her to come out. The buzz is getting louder. On Valentine’s Day, two days after our visit, AOL’s gossip site went on high bump alert, posting a photo of a yawning Lilly jutting out her belly, suggesting that a little hobbit-human hybrid was percolating within. Two days after that, perhaps coincidentally, Lilly fired her publicist.
And of course, everyone wants to know how naked Lost’s Bible girl is willing to get. There’s that magazine photo shoot that made her weep when she saw it. "It was too sexy for me," she says. "It crossed my line." Though producers have been conscious of her request to keep skin shots to a minimum, thanks to a new bra she’s been wearing on the show, Fox has dubbed her Cleavie. And there’s one actor who thinks he’ll put an end to Kate’s series-long celibacy: "I hope we come together in a kind of angry, animalistic thing, and then she realizes her folly when I’m like, ‘Now get me a beer, woman,’ says Josh Holloway, who plays Sawyer, the less savory man competing for Kate’s affection, apparendy even during phone interviews. "I have been calling these writers from the beginning going, ‘When’s Sawyer going to get some action? How about even second base?’ They’re just not thinking enough with the little head. They’ve got all these huge concepts and major plotlines. But how about getting down to some core Freud."
Lilly, however, has larger considerations than who’ll be sampling her mango on Lost: her future as an actress. Though she has expressed interest in the past in donning Wonder Woman’s bulletproof wrist cuffs on-screen, there have been no calls from Buffy creator Joss Whedon, the writer-director of the upcoming film. "You know whose career is fascinating to me?" she asks, standing on a Kailua beach. "Scarlett Johansson’s. She’s intensely successful in the way I’d like to be if I do film. People don’t look at her and think, This is the next girl for the cutesy pie romantic comedy. They think, This is the next girl for the really meaningful, dramatic Woody Allen film. Jeez, that’s a compliment." I point out that Johansson recently bared her buttocks on the cover of Vanity Fair. "Really?" Lilly says, sounding disappointed. "I’m curious: Can you be respected as an actress and show your ass? Do you have to show your ass?" She looks out at the sea and thinks for a moment, as if only God Himself might have the answers to those eternal questions.
How would you describe your place in Hawaii? It’s a sweet, little bungalow. It’s on a canal, and it’s really simple, and it’s really, really humble.
It’s your refuge. Did you bring things from home to furnish it? No. I bought almost every single thing that I furnished my house with at the Salvation Army in Hawaii. All second hand. Some of them are kind of retro, and some of them you’d never know.
Looks like Lost’s Evangeline Lilly is now a spokemodel for Karastan carpets. The full-page ads will run within the pages of America’s leading home shelter publications. Read the full carpet interview after the jump. More pictures in the gallery!
Karastan Carpets
To the millions of TV viewers who’ve become hooked on the award winning show “Lost,” she’s Kate—a rock of strength and endurance, integrity and independence. The actress, Evangeline Lilly, is perfectly cast in this role. In daily life, the Hollywood beauty also is a woman of character and determination. She shuns mediocrity and aims for excellence. Sudden fame has accompanied the success of her show and helped rocket her into household recognition. Yet, she’s remarkably well grounded with a vision steadied on achieving a balanced life of career and home. In an exclusive face-to-face interview with Karastan, Evangeline impresses with her candidness, realism and conviction. She’s authentic…refreshing…original. She makes a statement. Her own.
Interviewer: How important is your home to you?
Evangeline Lilly: My home is my castle, and I spend a lot of time nurturing it, redecorating—moving this and adjusting that, adding flowers and candles. Every night I bring home flowers and burn candles. And I have a real sense that home is what starts everything inside of you. If your home is peaceful, then you’re going to go out in your day peacefully. If your home is in turmoil, you’re going to go out in turmoil. Right now, I have two roommates, so it’s a challenge to keep the house the way I like. But, I’m also always changing things around. I have to change it all the time. I’m rearranging furniture and taking down paintings and putting up new ones, and buying new pieces of art. I love my home. It’s the only thing I really spend money on. I don’t really spend a lot of money on anything else. No fancy cars. No designer clothes.
Interviewer: So, how do you mediate with two roommates? Do you have the common space where everybody gets to throw in their ideas?
Evangeline Lilly: Yes. And my bedroom is my sanctuary. It’s the only place in the house that has a beautiful lush shag rug, which is my favorite.
Interviewer: What color?
Evangeline Lilly: It’s this cool… how to describe it?… kind of greeny-gold. And then my bedspread is sort of off-brown gold. And I have bamboo shades. The walls are all wood. Some of them are whitewashed and some of them are like a fake gray kind of wood.
Interviewer: How would you describe your place in Hawaii?
Evangeline Lilly: It’s a sweet, little bungalow. It’s on a canal, and it’s really simple, and it’s really, really humble.
Interviewer: It’s your refuge. Did you bring things from home to furnish it?
Evangeline Lilly: No. I bought almost every single thing that I furnished my house with at the Salvation Army in Hawaii. All second hand. Some of them are kind of retro, and some of them you’d never know.
Interviewer: How would you characterize your style?
Evangeline Lilly: Oh, I think it’s pretty hard to pin it down. I think my style is very eclectic, because I love so many different things. And, that’s true, too, in almost every aspect of my life. I can go from really edgy to tailored and professional, and I just love to change things up.
I’m the same with my house. I’ve got art pieces from Bali, and then I’ve got old plastic retro 70s furniture, and I have lighting that looks kind of 1950s, old but simple. And I’ve got all sorts of different elements thrown in, old little antique pieces of pottery. It’s a real mix.
Interviewer: It seems that you are very clear about yourself. Did you always want to be an actress?
Evangeline Lilly: I was completely different at different stages of my childhood. When I was young I was soft spoken and a little bit timid and passive. My dream then was to be a ballerina or a figure skater—something very delicate.
As I grew older, I developed a very innate passion for art. I was actually pretty good at it. So, I decided I wanted to be a painter, and then that moved into wanting to be an animator. By adolescence, I just wanted it to be something that was important…something that would make a difference in people’s lives or leave an imprint in history.
I started to do everything I could to succeed, but found that the more successful I became, the less people liked me. So, I made a conscious decision when I was about 17 years old to strive towards mediocrity. I completely abandoned the idea of grandeur and importance, and I wanted to be mediocre.
Interviewer: Because you wanted to blend in?
Evangeline Lilly: Yes, I just wanted friends. I just wanted people to like me. I just wanted for things to be simple and good. So, for five years I actively sought out mediocrity.
Interviewer: How did that make you feel?
Evangeline Lilly: I felt like I was a good woman, a good person. But I was sinking deeper and deeper into depression, because my soul wasn’t living. I was purposely holding down my soul and my spirit. It was dying inside of me.
Interviewer: Was there a turning point when you decided you couldn’t do this anymore?
Evangeline Lilly: Yes, absolutely. Ironically, when I hit adolescence, I was approached about modeling and acting all the time. And, for five years, I said, "No, I’m not interested. I want a simple life, I don’t want to be in the spotlight." Finally, a dear friend said to me, "Why, when you believe that everything in life happens for a reason, and that everything will lead you to where you need to go, do you ignore this one thing that keeps knocking on your door?" And I gave all these really legitimate reasons. "Oh, well, it’s a very shallow industry. It perpetuates a negative image for women. It’s this and it’s that, and I don’t want any part of it.” And, he looked me in the eye and said, "I think that’s bull. I think you’re afraid of your own success, and your strength and your power."
The second he said that, it hit me like a ton of bricks, and I cried my eyes out. I had this evening of finally realizing what I had done to myself—how much I had fought who I was, fought my power, fought my individuality, fought my innate desire to be strong and important, to stand out and do what I needed to do. So, as a way of addressing that I had hurt myself in that way, I went out and did some auditions.
That was January of 2004. In March of 2004— a month and a half later—I was in Hawaii filming the pilot for “Lost.”
Interviewer: With your life being somewhat nomadic—you’re living in a rented bungalow, traveling and in hotels a lot—what do you do to make a space feel more like home?
Evangeline LillyEvangeline Lilly: For me, candles are a big part of it. I don’t know why, but the warmth and the comfort of flickering light help. And a fire, in the fireplace or on the beach, is very comforting. I think when you make something consistent and familiar, it helps. I light candles every single night in my home.
Interviewer: You said you adapt well. And, it sounds like once you’re home, or settle into that hotel room, you’re able to take command. It’s the one place you can have control and express yourself.
Evangeline Lilly: Absolutely. And I adore having people over to my home. My number one reason I love that is because I love to see people at ease with each other. 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?”
Interviewer: Down the line in five years, chances are you will own your own beautiful house. Do you think about this? What do you see for yourself?
Evangeline Lilly: For years I’ve had my eye on a home that’s on the coastline of British Columbia. It’s a very modern home that was designed and built by an architect who lived there. Then he sold it to some other people who have kind of let it go. They just haven’t given it any life or done anything to make it come alive. I would love to buy that home, give it some life the way the architect had intended, and then rent it while I’m working in Hawaii or in Los Angeles. I eventually want to come back to Canada, to disappear, have nobody know me, and just be a writer and do what I want to do. I’ll have this place waiting for me on the ocean.
Interviewer: I’m surprised a modern style has attracted you, even though you admit your style is eclectic. But the location on the water sounds like it has the pull.
Evangeline Lilly: Yes, it’s just across the street from the water. Actually, there’s a park and then the ocean. When I do think of my perfect dream home, what I would want to build and live in, it’s not that home. But, I’d like that home to be the first one I own.
Interviewer: Growing up did you always have the same home?
Evangeline Lilly: No, we moved a lot. When I was little, I attended five different elementary schools. My parents are very restless people, which is probably where I get my own nomadic lifestyle from. Our homes were all very modest. My parents struggled financially. They got married very young, had kids right away before they had gone through university. My mom had a baby-sitting service out of the house, so there were lots of kids around when I was young. I tended to be a solitary young girl, and I still am. I would like to find a quiet corner and color in my coloring book. When I think back, I made that corner mine, not really caring about the rest of the house.
Interviewer: So you created your own space?
Evangeline Lilly: Yes. Which is what I do with my home now. I create my own space. Actually, one of the reasons I chose the little bungalow where I live in Hawaii is because there was this tiny little useless room that attaches to another tiny little useless room with a sink in it. I imagined this odd space as my dream nook. The one with the sink can be my crafts room. There’s no space for furniture in them; there’s barely enough space to even move around in them really. But these two little rooms are what sold me on the house. I like these little places. I like to create little oases.
Interviewer: Oh, how fantastic! You’ve successfully carved out of nothing something that makes you feel grounded when you’re home. What else is important to you when it comes to home and lifestyle?
Evangeline Lilly: Well, I have to have nature around me. I love the earth and this insanely beautiful creation that we live in. I just think it’s to be marveled at and appreciated. It gives us life. Nature inspires us. Not being able to reach out and touch it, or see it, makes me get really antsy.
Interviewer: How important are color and texture to you in your home?
Evangeline Lilly: I think color and texture are really important. But I’ll admit that I’m still learning a lot about it. Like I still look at my home all the time and think, "Why isn’t it there yet? Why doesn’t it just quite have that perfect something?" About four years ago, I actually considered taking a correspondence course on interior design and maybe being an interior designer, because I really love it. I probably could still benefit from that course because I don’t have the educated knowledge of what textures, colors, shapes and spaces need to be put together to make something just right. I’m learning it by trial and error, which is something that’s slow going.
Interviewer: I think you need to trust your own instincts. Like the rug in your bedroom—it sounds like you had a strong feeling about what would work and it did.
Evangeline Lilly: Maybe you’re right. Actually, I went into a rug shop, looking for a good rug, but couldn’t find one that suited me. Then I saw some wall-to-wall carpet that I thought was fantastic. So, I asked if it could be cut to make an area rug, with the edges finished. And they could. So, that’s what we did.
Interviewer: Oh, how great. So you kind of customized it and it’s sort of a little couture moment. You figured out what you wanted.
Evangeline Lilly: Exactly. And it was pretty critical to the rest of the room because I had learned that when you begin to decorate a room, you start with the floor. You work your way up from that foundation of color and pattern. Before I got it into the room, I thought it was a limey green. But once it was in the room, it looked more brown or gold. I had already bought things thinking the rug was lime—like my sheets, drapes and some other things. Those went into the cupboard and I went out and bought others that would work with the rug. Remember how I said I felt like my house is not quite there? Well, my bedroom now is the only room in my house that really is together and works. It’s great.
Recently, I was having guests over, and I just felt like the living room needed to be made cozier. At the last minute, I went out and spontaneously bought a very inexpensive rug, just to have something on my floor. Instantly the room just popped. It was like something came alive in there and everything fit together and it just worked. And I thought, "Wow, I think I need to start putting rugs throughout my house because that’s what has been missing."
Interviewer: It definitely helps give the character, which is something you instinctively understood the minute that you did it in your bedroom. Let me change the subject for a minute and ask you, what is the one thing that you need to do for yourself every day that will make you feel good?
Evangeline Lilly: The thing that I need to do for myself every day is look in the mirror and think, "You are who you are. You can’t change it. So just go be it." And that’s what I do every day. I try my very hardest to remember that I don’t have to be anything but Evangeline. That’s all that’s expected of me. And if I try to be more or less, I will fall flat on my face. So if I just continue to hold my head high and keep myself in check, I’m being who I was born to be. And, that boils down to body image, too. I am who I am and I am what I am. And it’s beautiful. And it’s okay even if it doesn’t look like the sexiest Victoria Secret model. It also boils down to my interactions with people.
Interviewer: You sound very self-aware, which probably explains why you are so adaptable in your life. I imagine the demands of the show and being in the public spotlight must have been an adjustment?
Evangeline Lilly: By the end of the first season I felt there were expectations for me to be someone I’m not. It was upsetting. I spent almost a month of my summer writing and reading, praying and meditating, and silently allowing myself to reconcile all of these things I’d experienced with the show and re-understanding this industry. Since the summer, I’ve started to see the fruits of this introspection. It comes in my fan mail. I read every single letter. Some just break my heart. I’ve cried over letters that have come in, from young women and older women alike, saying to me, "You know, you made me want to stop crash dieting and just be healthy. You are my role model. I want to be like you." It makes me understand why I’m doing this job, why I was led to do this job in the first place.
Interviewer: How much of you is in Kate, and Kate is in you?
Evangeline Lilly: Hmm…A lot. A lot. One time when the whole cast was together eating dinner, I was sitting next to Josh Holloway, who plays Sawyer, and I turned to him and said, "Josh, how much of Sawyer is Josh?” He looked at me, with those dimples and that grin, and answered, "They’re one and the same, honey." Then, I said to him, "How much of Kate do you think is me?” And, he just burst out laughing. "Do you even have to ask? You guys are the exact same person. You are Kate." And I started laughing. And said, "Not really. I think there’s differences." He said, "There is not an iota of difference." "You are Kate. You’re just not a criminal."
Yes, there’s a massive part of me that can be bold and courageous…very strong and very assertive and independent, almost to a fault sometimes. Like Kate, I’m afraid to be vulnerable, and I get my back up and I’m strong and I’m not going to let you in. Yet, I’m very sensitive. Emotionally, I bruise very easily. I’m a Leo, and this is very characteristic of our sign.
So, for me there’s a need for balance—fulfilling the sensitive side, letting my guard down, holding back the warrior in me. And I have to be vulnerable which is very hard for me to do, as it is for Kate. So when I play Kate, I always say to people, the only thing that I do to shift from Evangeline to Kate is I grit my teeth. Evangeline doesn’t need to be in that place, because I’m surrounded by people who care about me and love me. I have a great job. I have wonderful roommates who take care of me. I have a family who adores me. Kate doesn’t have any of that. So the main difference is that she has a lot of Evangeline but she’s bearing down and gritting her teeth. She’s made her life what it’s got to be to get by. That’s how I shift into Kate.
Interviewer: I’m intrigued by your conviction that fate has led you to this role. It’s obvious that working outdoors in nature helps feed your soul.
Evangeline Lilly: Oh, absolutely! Somebody asked me, if being on the show all the time dressed in grubby clothes, dirty and sweaty with the bugs and the heat and humidity, causes me to crave some couture. They assumed I can’t wait to get into a gown and walk down a red carpet. Truthfully, I love being in the jungle. I love it when the make-up artists come to set, they come equipped with dirt and sweat. I spend my days climbing trees and I can crawl out of bed and walk on set and that’s exactly all I have to look like. That’s Kate. And for me, I think if I was doing any other job, I would be an unhappy person. I am so glad that I get to maintain a relatively down-to-earth lifestyle.
Interviewer: What would you be doing if you were not acting?
Evangeline Lilly: I would still be in university studying international relations. I have no idea what job I would be doing, though, because there’s no way I’d still be doing the same job. I changed jobs like I changed shirts. It was something I just like to do—I like trying my hand at everything. Originally, I wanted to do humanitarian work. I actually feel that getting into acting, which fate has led me to, is my window and path into humanitarian work. I always said I want to do something important. And I feel this work is what’s helping me get there.
Interviewer: It sounds like you’ve got a keen understanding of the power of celebrity and have plans to harness it for a greater good.
Evangeline Lilly: I love the creative end of acting. But I hate fame. The way I’ve been able to embrace fame is by realizing that celebrity is just a means to send whatever message you want out into the world. Hopefully, I’ll soon have the chance for appearances and public speaking, because I really do want to share the message with women all over the world that it’s okay to be who you are.
Interviewer: Who’s your favorite actress? I forgot to ask you who you really admire. It doesn’t have to be an actor or an actress.
Evangeline Lilly: Well, as an actress, and as a person, I really admire Diane Keaton. She’s feisty, strong, beautiful and talented, and intelligent. Outside of acting, the person that I admire the most is my mother. It sounds like a cheesy actor answer, but I’m dead honest. If I had to try to change or better myself, the model I would be using is my mother. I admire her immensely. She’s so gentle. She’s the most gentle person you’ll ever meet.
Interviewer: Did she do anything at home particularly that you remember that you’re going to take into your home?
Evangeline Lilly: She has three daughters. And she spent a lot of time just talking to us. She’d sit at the side of our bed before we went to sleep and instead of asking a question, she would just sit there and stroke our hair. And then we would just start talking about anything that came to mind—anything we were feeling or thinking. And because of it, I ended up sharing so much of myself with my mom, that she became one of my best friends. I would confide in my mother. She knew everything there was to know about my life. I kept nothing from her because she just gave it the time that so many parents don’t give to their kids just to listen. I mean really listen.
So that’s something I’d like to be able to do when I have kids. I have to remember that no matter how busy I get, no matter how distracted I am, I have to take the time to listen to my kids and to really pay attention to them.
Interviewer: What do you do for relaxation?
Evangeline Lilly: Reading. Writing. Exercising… swimming, running, hiking, cycling and surfing. I get pleasure and relaxation out of being productive. I enjoy the idea that even though I’m resting, I’m accomplishing something by reading a book. Or even though I’m resting I’m accomplishing something by sewing that shirt that I’ve been meaning to sew for weeks. And it’s relaxing. It’s so very meditative and quiet and enjoyable. But at least I’m producing something. I’m being productive in some way. I have a very hard time being completely idle.
Interviewer: You like writing? What do you write?
Evangeline Lilly: Writing is my number one passion. I’ve written two novels. I’ve written a screenplay. I’m in the middle of three other screenplays. I also write short stories and poetry.
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