Evangeline Lilly: Snapshot

Name
Evangeline Lilly
Date of Birth
August 03, 1979
Birth Place
Alberta, Canada
For Evangeline Lilly fame came without the pre-requisite years of endless auditions. About six weeks after she decided to pursue acting in 2004, the former Sunday school teacher won the role of Kate, a castaway with a checkered past, on ABC's Lost.

Before filming the hit drama with costar and real-life love Dominic Monaghan, the Canadian beauty was a devout Baptist girl who spent time living in a grass hut as a missionary in the Philippines. Although fame came quickly, she hasn't let her Golden Globe nod and Emmy win get to her head: after the first season of Lost, Lilly trekked to Rwanda to return to her missionary roots.

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Evangeline Lilly: Five Fun Facts

  1. After a night of bowling, Lost costar Jorge Garcia dared Evangeline Lilly to urinate in public. "I've got my pants down and my bum hanging into this garbage can, and he has to give me twenty dollars," she told Rolling Stone in 2005.
  2. Evangeline Lilly once worked as a flight attendant and didn't like it. "They tell you to buy your shoes two sizes too big because your feet are going to swell," she said on The Late Show with David Letterman in 2007.
  3. On her 26th birthday, Evangeline Lilly brought a recycling bin to the set of Lost and asked the cast and crew to start recycling as a birthday gift to her.
  4. Evangeline Lilly's fondness for climbing trees earned her the nickname of "Monkey."
  5. Evangeline Lilly doesn't expect Valentine's Day gifts. "When I got old enough to date, I realized that Valentine's Day is just a commercial marketing scam to make men feel bad," she told Esquire in 2007. "So I let my boyfriends off the hook."

Evangeline Lilly: Biography

1997

Summer

Missionary Girl

Lilly, a devout Christian from Alberta, Canada, spends time as a missionary in the Philippines before attending the University of British Columbia. While studying international relations, she helps pay tuition by working as an extra. "Being an extra, ironically, turned out to be something I loved," she tells the AP in 2006. "I could go in when I wanted. Do my homework. Read books. Eat their food. Rest. That was my job and I got paid for it!"

2002

Evangeline Lilly

Bumpy Road

To earn some cash, Lilly becomes a spokesperson for dating hotline, Livelinks (left). The ads resurface in 2005 (after she's famous for her role on Lost), and she finds it all embarrassing. "I cried when I saw it," she tells Glamour. In her real love life, Lilly marries longtime sweetheart Murray Hone in 2003, but the union ends in divorce a year later.

2004

Evangeline Lilly

January

Luckily Lost

Lilly decides to go full throttle into acting and goes on a handful of auditions, including one for a new ABC drama about a group of people stranded on a deserted island. Within six weeks, she's in Hawaii filming the pilot of Lost with Matthew Fox (right). "She's amazing," Fox tells Rolling Stone. "Stepping into the lead of a show with no experience? Her poise and confidence are remarkable."

Read More on Evangeline Lilly's Life

Photo Credits

Top Left: Carlos Anthonyo/Zuma

BIOGRAPHY (top to bottom): livelinks.com; ABC

Edited by Janet Mock

Celebrity Central