The 'Ant-Man and the Wasp' actress reveals she came close to retiring from acting as she struggled with fame following her role on the hit TV series.
- July 3, 2018
AceShowbiz - Actress Evangeline Lilly struggled through "a pretty dark time" after shooting to fame on hit TV show Lost
The Canadian star scored her big break portraying Kate Austen on the plane crash drama series, which ran for six seasons from 2004 to 2010, but Evangeline wasn't prepared for the huge life change and loss of privacy.
"I was never enamoured by the idea of fame," she tells People magazine, explaining she experienced "a pretty dark time" as she grappled with living her life in the public eye.
Evangeline even came close to retiring from acting altogether once the show wrapped, as she made her home in Hawaii, where Lost was filmed, and settled down with her longtime partner Norman Kai, a former production assistant on the series, and the father of her two children.
She took two years off from Hollywood, before director Peter Jackson tracked her down and asked her to be a part of his Lord of the Rings prequel, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and it was only then that she managed to "make peace" with the industry and "embrace" the aspects of fame that had made her "uncomfortable".
"I had to find a place in which I could be happy," she says of balancing fame with her low-key family life away from the cameras. "And now I very much am".
Evangeline, 38, reprised her role as Tauriel in 2014's The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, and has since gone on to become part of the Marvel family, starring as superhero Hope van Dyne, also known as the Wasp, in 2015's Ant-Man and its new sequel, Ant-Man and the Wasp. She will also feature in the Avengers: Infinity War sequel, which is due to open in theatres next year (19).
