 |
| Evangeline Lilly plays an elf warrior in the new Hobbit movie. Lilly grew up in Alberta. |
Canadian actress Evangeline Lilly is proud to have had a hand in helping shape Middle Earth mythology by playing tough-yet-tender elf warrior, Tauriel.
She’s the only female in director Peter Jackson’s second Hobbit movie, The Desolation of Smaug, opening Dec. 13, to be followed by There and Back Again in December 2014.
Once again, the dwarves, Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) are on the move, trying to reclaim their homeland from a covetous, fearsome dragon named Smaug, voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch.
They run into trouble in Mirkwood Forest, eventually aided by swift-moving elf warriors, including Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and a new character, the brave and deadly Tauriel, head of the Silvan Guard.
Alberta-born Lilly, 34, dons a red wig and pointed ears and learned to speak elfish to take on the newly created role of a “bad-ass” elf, one who is quick with bow and arrow and lethal with daggers.
“She was invented by (screenwriters) Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson and Philippa Boyens. It was a combination effort but they were generous to put me in that group,” said Lilly as she sipped a cup of jasmine tea in a Toronto hotel room Friday. “They welcomed me into the world with open arms; I felt part of the family.”
The Hobbit was “my favourite book as a kid,” so Lilly was thrilled to have a role in the second and third installments of the screen tale.
“We all worked collaboratively on (Tauriel) and deciding who she was and what role she was to play in the films,” added Lilly, who first gained attention for playing Kate Austen on six seasons of the hit TV series, Lost.
Like Kate, Tauriel is self-reliant and resilient. But as a healer, the elf also has a mystical side. And you’d better not cross her; gracefully athletic and powerful, Tauriel is no slouch when it comes to battling bad guys and brutal orcs, having gown up defending her homeland’s borders for centuries. Elves are immortal, after all.
There have been females in both The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit films, including Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, but Tauriel is the largest female part to date.
Jackson is shooting the three films in The Hobbit series concurrently and Lilly was disappointed she wasn’t able to be on set with Blanchett.
“I never got to work with her there as there was a year of filming where I wasn’t there and she did all of her work in the year previous, so there was only one woman on the set at a time,” said Lilly. “I would have given anything to work with her. She is the very top of my list of acting legends.”
What’s it like walking onto a film populated by an all-male cast? Lilly responds with a pleasurable chuckle.
“On set I felt there was this incredible excitement when I arrived,” she said. “There are no females in the book so I was the lone female character in this cast of men who I think were all relieved I wasn’t another stinky, hairy, smelly dwarf.”
But Tauriel does have a soft spot for one of their company. Kili, played by Being Human’s Aidan Turner, may have caught her elfin eye.
“I keep describing it as a percolating romance,” she said. “It’s there but it’s not there and we’re waiting to see what may come if it.”
Lilly, who balances her work life by working with various charitable and humanitarian causes, is keen to talk about these softer elements of her warrior’s profile and the need for more balanced female role models.
“One of the mistakes which has been made, is when we see a woman copying male violence, we label her as an ‘empowered woman’ and I don’t think that’s the message that should be sent to women of (any) age,” she explained. “I don’t want to purport that message. With Tauriel, for me, it was very important that even beyond her ability to kick ass would be her compassion and her vulnerability and her striving for justice and truth and her defending the weak and the vulnerable.
“I really believe that female power is distinct from male power,” Lilly added. “Female characteristics are labelled as weaknesses but I think they are our greatest strengths. My character is driven to action through her compassion and that is why she is such a likeable character and such a powerful female role model.”
Lilly, who said she feels a responsibility both as a parent and as a woman to present positive onscreen role models, grew up in an Alberta town so small she could ride her bike as a kid from one end to the other in no time. She had a simple upbringing in a home that was “very empowering,” she said.
“My father was the polar opposite of the sexist,” Lilly pointed out. “He had three daughters and in his eyes, us girls could do anything and be anything better than any guy. I grew up with an incredible amount of confidence.”
Lilly added she feels a “sense of responsibility” to spread that message, not only with her onscreen roles but also at home with her 2-year-old son, Kahekili.
“Having a son I feel it is also my responsibility to teach him how to think about women,” she said.
This marks the second big entertainment franchise for Lilly, who interrupted her studies at the University of British Columbia, where she was taking international relations and global science, to audition for Lost in January 2004. Three months later, she was shooting the series in Hawaii.
“The first one was terrifying, the first one was difficult and the first one was an ill fit for a Prairie girl,” Lilly responded with a grin when asked how the two experiences compare.
“This one, I was looking forward to coming back into a big franchise with much more experience in this world. I feel much more at ease, I feel so much more confident and capable and there’s less unknowns. And it’s a lot easier the second time around.”
Source: thestar.com
No comments:
Post a Comment