So it is no surprise that Evangeline Lilly's path to stardom was one of those curves from her initial career road. She was a model who was coaxed into auditioning for a role in a TV pilot. Since it was going to be filmed in Hawaii, it probably was a no brainer. A diversion. A lark. Because she says her real dream, she said, has always been to be a writer.
She has acting as a means to pay her bills, but her passion is still writing.
Lilly, 35, who landed her breakout role on the ABC series "Lost" in
2004, said that at the time, she wasn't even sure she wanted to act
professionally. A few years later, she decided she "really hated working
as an actress."
"I was like, 'Well, then, what do I want to do if I don’t want to be an
actress?' Because I didn’t really mean to become an actress. I was sort
of an accidental actress," she said. "I wound up deciding that I wanted
to make a go of a career as a writer."
Ultimately, however, dream roles kept finding her. Lilly's childhood
passion for J.R.R. Tolkien was the catalyst for accepting her role in
"The Hobbit" film franchise, as was her desire to play a strong female
lead. She then accepted a role in the upcoming Marvel film, "Ant-Man,"
because of her desire to work with its star, Paul Rudd.
However, Lilly,
who recently wrote a children's book, "The Squickerwonkers," isn't
planning on doing any other acting projects at the moment -- not that
she minds.
“There are so many reasons why, for me, writing is superior to acting,”
she said. “One of them is anonymity. Writers can live relatively normal
lives. Most [working] actors can’t. Writers can work from home and be
near their family most of the time. Actors usually can’t. Writers expend
a lot of intellectual energy, but not so much emotional energy. And I
have intellectual energy coming out of my yin-yang, but emotional energy
— I am so lazy. I just don’t have a lot of emotional energy to give. I
don’t like drama in my life, and I don’t like having to pretend [to have
drama].”
