<body scroll="auto"><script type="text/javascript"> function setAttributeOnload(object, attribute, val) { if(window.addEventListener) { window.addEventListener('load', function(){ object[attribute] = val; }, false); } else { window.attachEvent('onload', function(){ object[attribute] = val; }); } } </script> <div id="navbar-iframe-container"></div> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://apis.google.com/js/platform.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> gapi.load("gapi.iframes:gapi.iframes.style.bubble", function() { if (gapi.iframes && gapi.iframes.getContext) { gapi.iframes.getContext().openChild({ url: 'https://www.blogger.com/navbar/29838712?origin\x3dhttps://flick101studio.blogspot.com', where: document.getElementById("navbar-iframe-container"), id: "navbar-iframe" }); } }); </script>

December 06, 2006


Canadian actor still trying to make sense of her Lost fame, but at least she's made peace with Hawaii

—If you were a struggling actress and you were suddenly offered $60,000 a week to move to Hawaii and star in a television series that was destined to become a huge hit it would be a dream come true. Right?

Not if you're Evangeline Lilly. The Canadian-born actress who stars as Kate, the beautiful escaped convict on Lost, detests the idea of being famous and at first she hated everything about Hawaii, which she finds so different from her homeland. "I had to keep my lips sealed because people were always saying how lucky I was to live in paradise and I wanted to say, `I hate it,'" she recalled.

It was only when she learned to surf, then found love with fellow Lost actor, English-born Dominic Monaghan, that she began to embrace life on the island. "It was a huge cultural shift for me," said the 27-year-old Lilly, now in her third year on the series, currently on a mid-season hiatus until February.

"I come from Canada where military is not an important thing, where people are multicultural and free-thinking, and women have equal rights and there are four seasons, and people look you in the eye and greet you when you walk down the street. "I came to Hawaii and into a world where if you drive for too long you're going to hit the ocean or a military base, and where women haven't quite acquired the rights they have in a lot of other places in the world, where there are no seasons, there is no change in the weather, it's humid and sticky all the time, and I didn't have any friends or family. "Then I learned to surf and I learned to love it and to embrace it and to not miss home so much.

It's a very small island, so there's something about going out into the ocean that just makes you feel a lot freer and more at peace, and it's very healing." It helps that 30-year-old Monaghan, who plays the druggy rock musician Charlie, is there, too. During the summer break from filming the couple took off for Europe to visit Monaghan's family in Manchester, and travel around England, Scotland, France and Spain. Lilly, who has a playful charm and a lively sense of humour, was talking at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel on the Hawaiian island of Oahu's famous Waikiki Beach during a brief break from filming Lost. She spends nine months a year on the island and has rented a home there.

Although she is happy in her personal life, Lilly, a former missionary who comes from a deeply religious family, is still not sure about her future as an actress. "I've struggled with fame. I don't like it and I've never wanted it. It's an ugly world, with the pressures, the lack of privacy and the lack of anonymity," she said. "I am an incredibly private person, and it's so exhausting to me that everywhere I go people know me or think they know me. It's something I've been grappling with and I don't yet know whether to embrace it, ignore it or reject it. Once I have decided and made my peace with it is when I will be able to decide how to go forward in my career.

"If I could act and make the income I make and be anonymous, I would never want to leave the job, but if I have my way in this life, after Lost is over, I would become a writer. Writing has been one of the most powerful influences in my life and it always has been since I was a little girl."

Born in Fort Saskatchewan, Alta., Lilly moved with her parents when she was a child to Kelowna and attended the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where she studied international relations. Devoted to philanthropy and children's projects, she founded and ran a world development and human rights committee during her college years. "I have really good parents," she said. "We didn't have a lot of money and we didn't mind. I have two sisters and my parents always taught us that love and family are more important than any material possessions you could ever have." Ironically it was Lilly's fear of being noticed that led her into acting. "I just so desperately wanted not to be noticed and not stand out that for five years I had pursued mediocrity as hard as I could," she laughed. "Then I finally decided to assert myself and stand out, so the way I did it was by going to auditions.

I did about 25 auditions and two months after I started I was in Hawaii filming Lost. So it happened kind of by accident." Lilly professes not to know what will happen to her character Kate in the coming episodes any more than she knows what lies ahead for herself or even whether she will continue acting when the series ends. At the moment she is looking forward to going back to the colder temperatures of British Columbia for Christmas. "The longer I'm away the more often I go back," she said laughing. "I need my fix. Christmas is huge in our family and I've got to get home and enjoy the snow." This year, however, she will be happy to return to Hawaii when the holiday is over. "I'm enjoying my life here more and more every year, and I don't think I really want to leave any time soon," she said. "The place has grown on me."


6:14 PM


be the limelight.