Movie interview material
Beloved by worldwide audiences for her performance as
the feisty Kate in the Fox TV’s acclaimed mystery series “Lost” for which she
earned a Golden Globe Best Actress nomination, Canada’s Evangeline Lilly now
stars in a Silvan Elf, Tauriel, in Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit: The Desolation
of Smaug.”
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| Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. |
Daughter of Mirkwood, Tauriel is as deadly as she is
beautiful. A favorite of King Thranduil (Lee Pace) and Captain of the Woodland
Guard, her job is to follow the orders of the King without question. However,
Tauriel has a strong will and unyielding passion for what she believes is
right. An expert fighter, she carries signature weapons including twin daggers
and a bow and arrow. Like Legolas (Orlando Bloom), Tauriel is extremely fast
and agile in battle. Although she has lived for many hundreds of years in
Middle-earth, she remains one of the youngest of the Elven folk, and has rarely
ventured beyond the borders of the great forest.
Question: How did you become involved in "The
Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug?"
Evangeline Lilly: I kind of got drawn into
the project. I was laid up in bed, having just had my first child—I mean
literally just—and I got a call saying, ‘Peter Jackson would like you to play
an Elf in his upcoming Hobbit films. Would you mind getting on a call with his
writing team and discussing the possibility?’ And I was like, ‘Holy crap!’
I thought I had retired at that point from acting, and I
was moving into a stage of life with motherhood, and attempting a writing
career. My focus was totally shifted away from acting. The Hobbit had been my
favorite book as a young teen. Peter Jackson’s realization of The Lord of the
Rings films had been some of my favorite movies ever. And I was a huge fan of
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, all of the work of Tolkien. So,
I was like, ‘Aw, man, I have to take this call. I can’t say no to that, I
can’t. No matter how much I want to move on, I have to take that call.’
I also knew from different people in the industry who
had worked with them that Peter and his team were incredibly good people.
They’re just wonderful to work for. So I took the call, and they told me they
wanted me to play a Wood-elf. The Wood-elves were my favorite characters. I
used to fantasize as a little girl about being a Wood-elf. I couldn’t say no.
I had been asked when I was working on Lost throughout
the years, ‘What is your dream role?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know, I don’t really
have one.’ But you don’t know you have these things until they get proposed to
you. And then it’s like, ‘Oh, my God, this is a dream role.’ I didn’t realize
it, but this is a total dream role for me. So when my baby was only three
months old, I flew up to New Zealand and started stunt training.
Q: Your character, Tauriel, is a new character who is
not explicitly described in the book. Did you see that as an opportunity to
contribute to the character? And what were the discussions like with you and
the writers?
Lilly: Yeah. I was really
fortunate in that because my character was brand new, so there was all this
room to play. There was all this room for the writers to open up the floor to
me and say, ‘What do you envision, and how do you see her, and what would you
want to contribute.’ I’ve never worked in a situation where writers are so
collaborative with the actor.
I can’t tell you how intimate that process was. To be
invited to Philippa Boyens’s home and sit down with Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh,
Philippa Boyens, and go over pages of script that are not finalized, and
contribute. And say, ‘Well, I think this, and I think that. And what about
this? No, yes?’ It’s kind of nerve-wracking the first time you say to Academy
Award-winning writers, ‘I don’t think so.’ [laughs] I’m like, ‘How dare I; it’s
so inappropriate!’—but that’s how humble they are, and how open and
collaborative, that they would invite that.
So I really think that I was able to infuse a lot of my
own thoughts and feelings about Tauriel into the character, which, of course,
is a double-edged sword. Because if the world knows that, they’re going to be
particularly angry with me if they don’t like her. But I’m very willing and
ready to deal with the masses coming with torches to burn me at the stake.
[Laughs] So it’s fine. I think it’s kind of fun.
Q: Can you tell me about Tauriel? What’s she like, and
what did you like about her?
Lilly: Those are two great
complimentary questions. For lack of a better way of putting it, she is an
empowered female figure because she is head of the Elven Guard, so she’s in a
leadership position. She is a ruthless, precise, talented fighter. She mows
down Orcs like they are blades of grass.
But what I like about her is that that is not what makes
her a strong woman in my mind, or a strong female character—because she’s not a
woman; she’s an Elf. [Laughs] It’s the reason why she fights—she fights for
truth and justice. And when I see films where women go out and kick butt, their
aggression looks like a woman trying to mimic a man. I think that’s
counterproductive to female empowerment because I don’t think women should
aspire to be like men. I think women should aspire to be the most incredible,
powerful version of themselves, which means in my mind, they hold onto their
feminine virtues of compassion, grace, love, and beauty, and things that shine
out from the inside.
So when I think about Tauriel, I’m always hesitant to
play a role where a woman goes around killing things because I don’t like that
message. But in the The Hobbit films, almost every single male character in
that movie is motivated by selfish desires. Tauriel is one of the very few
characters in the films who is motivated by justice and truth. That’s what
she’s fighting for; that’s her drive—her compassion for the weak, and the
suffering; and her desire to fight for justice and truth. That’s what I like
the most about her.
When I look at the other characters that share that with
her, two that come to mind are Gandalf and Galadriel. And I think, ‘I’m in
great company.’ Those are like two of my favorite characters in the Trilogy,
and I’m proud to be in that camp, the not selfish camp. [Laughs]
Q: What was it like for you to join this merry band of
actors down in New Zealand?
Lilly: It was wonderful. I like
to think of us as the Commonwealth Company because we primarily all came from
Commonwealth countries. It was England, and Ireland, and Scotland, and
Australia, and New Zealand, and Canada. I was the only Canadian represented.
We’ve been on American films so everyone drinks coffee and Coke; everyone on
this one drank tea. We had this commonality in our cultural backgrounds that
made it a very quick, easy entry into the group. I came in a year after they’d
been already filming together for a long time, so I was the new kid on the
block. And it would have been very easy for me to feel ostracized or on the
outside, but never for a minute did I feel that way.
I think to a certain extent those boys were like, ‘Oh,
my God, a woman, thank God.’ So, in a way, I probably had a leg in because they
were grateful to have a female on set who was smiling, and giggling, and doing
the things that girls do. So it was wonderful.
I primarily worked with the Elves and the humans. I
actually didn’t work a lot with the Dwarves. And I was very lucky in that I got
paired off and in scenes with Bard’s children, and I love working with
children. It’s my favorite. I just think it’s so much fun. It reminds me all
the time that, ‘Oh, what I do for a living is I play house.’ That’s what I do,
and it’s fun, and it’s sweet, and it’s easy and simple, because they don’t
think about it, they don’t complicate it. And that was one of the highlights of
filming for me.
Q: What has it been like for you to work with Peter
Jackson?
Lilly: Peter is my favorite kind
of director because he doesn’t take anything he does seriously. He has a
background in genre horror films that he made in his backyard, and he got his
start in film. And he still treats it that way, thank God, because he hasn’t become
some kind of film mogul who thinks that the sun and the moon rise from him. He
always wants to laugh. He always wants to goof around. And he is very humble
and very sweet.
For some reason, I’m very easily intimidated when I’m on
a film set. Surprisingly, it’s a characteristic of my own that I don’t
understand. I think it’s because I have to be so vulnerable. In life, I’m not
easily intimidated at all. But the minute I’m on a film set, if a director is
very, very serious, or heavy-handed, or nit-picking every little thing about my
performance, I feel it happen inside of me where I get actor’s block. It’s the
same kind of thing as a writer’s block, where I just shut down inside. I’m
searching for that natural ease and it’s just gone, and I can’t find it, and
it’s a horrible feeling—I never had that with Peter.
He was always helpful, and easy, and lovely. And he has
the best earlobes in the industry; I could rub them all day. I love him. And it
was just a pleasure. It was a treat.
A
production of New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures (MGM), “The
Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,” will be released in 3D, 2D and IMAX theaters
in the Philippines by Warner Bros. Pictures
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