Evangeline Lilly almost quit acting after starring in ‘Real Steel’ alongside Hugh Jackman.
The 38-year-old actress has admitted she toyed with the idea of turning her back on her big screen career after she played Bailey Tallet in the 2011 sports drama because she didn’t like how quickly she had been thrusted into the limelight around the world.
Speaking to ‘The Hollywood Reporter’, she said: "Basically, by accident, my first speaking role in film or television was ‘Lost’, and so I was instantly launched into international stardom, and that was really uncomfortable for me.
"I instantly balked, didn’t know how to deal with it and felt very uncomfortable after that situation. I ended up deciding to retire after I finished ‘Lost’. I did a film called ‘Real Steel’ with Hugh Jackman and then I walked away. I said, ‘I’m done, I’m never doing this again.’"
The brunette beauty spent two years away from the limelight – during which time she had a child, wrote scripts and lived a "quiet little life" – but she was lured back into the movie industry when she received a call from Peter Jackson about the ‘The Hobbit’.
She explained: "I got a covert call from Peter Jackson, who I knew through my relationship with Dom [Monaghan] back in the day, and he said, ‘Nobody in Hollywood seems to be able to reach Evangeline, but we want to get a hold of her because we want to cast her in this film.’ And I was so torn because I had genuinely retired.
"I thought I was done, but I really wanted to do the movie. The little 13-year-old girl in me was like ‘I get to be a woodland elf? What?’ "
But Jackson managed to persuade her to play the role of Tauriel in 2013’s ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’ and she has admitted she had a "wonderful time" doing it.
She said: "I made a decision and I decided to go do the film. I had a wonderful time making that movie: One of the highlights in my life was living in New Zealand for that year and being a part of that family. That helped opened my eyes to the fact that, okay, this job can be a joy, it’s just a matter of how you approach it, and what you do with it, how much I put myself out there, and to a certain degree, how much I work."
Evangeline then thought about retirement again after the ‘The Hobbit’ but was stopped in her tracks when she received a call about ‘Ant-Man’ in 2015.
She added: "I was finishing press for ‘The Hobbit’, that’s when I got the call from Marvel, and I thought, ‘I just need to either draw a very firm line in the sand and say I’m done, or I need to just make my peace with the thing, find a way to be happy and do it in a way that makes me feel comfortable and satisfied.’ So that’s what I ended up deciding."
Evangeline Lilly almost quit acting
