In May 2024, InHabit’s Editor in Chief Annie Brandner sat down with Canadian author and actor Evangeline Lilly at her Vancouver area home. Perhaps best known for her work in film and television on Lost, The Hobbit, and Antman & The Wasp, Lilly has written and published three books in her children’s series The Squickerwonkers and continues to write while on indefinite hiatus from acting. 

Read part one here. 

In part two of the conversation, Lilly discusses her experience of empathy, community and evolution as a Hollywood actor. She also opens up about navigating controversy, letting people misunderstand her, and her desire for better, more human conversations online.

On acting, empathy & community

Empathy seems like an important element of acting, helping you connect to characters and convey emotion. What have you learned about empathy through your work as an actor? Has it had an impact on your personal life?

So, fame is not the only part of acting I struggle with. I actually really struggle with acting itself — I find it extremely painful — and it's unsustainable to do something that’s really painful 12-18 hours a day for years on end. There are a number of reasons, but a big part of it is that I’m an extreme empath by nature.

I had no training when I became an actress. I didn't go to school for it and I had next to no experience. I just pulled on my empathy. I could feel the pain, the anger, the joy of my character. When I first started on Lost, J.J. Abrams and Bryan Burk would say things like, "Oh, she's a natural." But in a way, I was actually becoming my character, and I didn't realize the toll that was taking on me.

While I was on my last project, my counsellor asked me whether I embody or become my character when I act. I said, "I become my character." And she said, "Okay, we need to work on that." 

Over the years, people would ask whether I was drawing on my own past pains or traumas when I was acting, and I would think, How could I do that? I don't even exist in that space. My memories are gone – I'm somebody else. 

I’ve learned that I need to be careful about how vulnerable I make myself to my own empathy when I’m acting. But the truth is I don't really know how to act if I do that. So if I ever did go back to acting, I would have to find a whole new way to access my craft. 

That was the sneaking suspicion that I harboured – that because of my hiding, my discomfort, and my inability to be vulnerable, there was this amazing community experience that was there and available to me, but I just didn't know how to be a part of it.

From the outside, working on a film or TV show looks like an immersive experience — one with the potential to foster a really strong sense of community. A bit like summer camp, where you can form deep bonds, shorthands and shared understandings. Has that been your experience? 

I have a lot of pain surrounding this question. For a long time, I would hear other actors talk about it in that way, and I would think, You're so full of shit. You're just saying that to make the fans happy because that's what everyone wants to hear. But that's not really what's happening. But then I began to wonder if maybe it was actually happening for others, but not for me. That was the sneaking suspicion that I harboured – that because of my hiding, my discomfort, and my inability to be vulnerable, there was this amazing community experience that was there and available to me, but I just didn't know how to be a part of it. 

If acting was painful, and the lack of community was painful, what was your experience like when a project would end? Did you feel a sense of relief? 

On the one hand I was so relieved for it to be done — for all those reasons. But then there was also this feeling of, Wait! It can’t be over because I haven't figured it out yet. I'm still not getting it right. That would lead me into a desire to get right into the next project so I could try and figure it out there. I just never seemed to get it. That became really painful because I experienced it all as being quite lonely. 

When I would see or hear other people in the public eye who seemed to have really close friendships, I’d be so envious. Like Emma Stone and Jennifer Lawrence — they seem like they have a really close friendship. I would see friendships like that and be so envious. I would think, I'm so happy for them. And then, I really really hope it's true. Because wouldn’t that have been amazing if I could have had a bosom buddy to go through everything with? Especially when I was propelled into the spotlight in my twenties. Imagine if I had had someone who knew what I was going through, because she was going through it too? That would have been amazing. 

All my friends were outside of the industry. Partly, I liked it that way because I craved normalcy. But my people didn't understand what I was experiencing, so it added to that sense of loneliness. Hollywood became a very lonely, hollow place for me. I didn't feel like I was developing the kind of meaningful friendships or relationships I would love to have had. 

Have you discussed this with others in the industry? 

I was actually just talking about this with Charlie Cox, who plays Daredevil in the Marvel universe. He and I were hanging out and talking over lunch at a Comic-Con. 

I told him one thing I regretted was that, having never lived in Los Angeles during my career —which is unusual for an actor — I never really got to be a part of the community of Hollywood. I never had an in-group. I always felt on the outside. 

And he essentially said, “If it's any consolation, you should know none of us feel like we have that. Even those of us who live in LA.” 

You go to a job and you spend all this time together, you work really hard and have all these experiences together, but then you leave. And in my experience, nobody keeps in touch. And you wonder, Was any of that real? I guess a lot of actors just come to terms with it; you come in, do your job, and go. 

For me, with the amount of time we put in — the hours, days, months and years we put in — to come away without any lasting, meaningful relationships or connection felt untenable.I think that has always been a great source of pain for me in the business. 

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On evolution and mortality

Are there film projects where you’ve felt a particularly strong sense of meaning or connection — to the project or to your character? 

[Pause] I’d say the most free I've ever felt on a film was in South of Heaven. For the first time, I felt I was playing a character — Annie — that was pretty close to who I actually am. 

To be fair, I’ve taken on a number of roles that were interesting reflections of my own evolution. Kate [on TV series Lost] was very much the embodiment of who I was at that time in my life. She was this tomboy criminal who was tough and sensitive. We were both on the run, so to speak — I had been moving around a lot in my life trying to figure out who I was. We were in many ways the same person, so it wasn't a stretch to be her. 

And in The Hobbit, I played Tauriel, a very feminine elf who was also a fierce warrior. At the time, I was a new mom, and was experiencing my own shift toward embracing more of my softer side. 

Hope [Van Dyne in the Antman and the Wasp films] has always been a bit of a struggle for me. She and I have never aligned the way I did with my other characters. If I'm honest, I feel she’s been my weakest character, not because she is weak but because I didn't embody her well. 

It was while I was playing Hope that I also played Annie in the movie South of Heaven. And Annie couldn't have been more different from Hope. 

What was it about Annie that resonated with you so deeply? 

She didn't live in the duality; Annie lived in that beautiful space of allowing for it all. Life could be all at once infuriating, painful and beautiful — at once the scariest and the most incredible thing. She was holding those truths, those tensions, and she did it with peace, and with pain. She did it with vulnerability and with kindness. 

When I read the script, I thought, Yes, this is the character I want to put out in the world. This! Not “Rah! Rah! I'm right. You're wrong. I'm going to kill you!” But rather, “You really hurt me, and I love you.” It was a really exciting character for me to play. It felt so aligned with what I believe, and who I am. 

According to Jung, coming to terms with your own mortality is one of the tasks of life’s second half. Would you say Annie coming to terms with her mortality in the film is part of what resonated for you? 

I think, actually, it was that Annie was already fully at peace with her mortality. She was teaching Jimmy Ray, Jason Sudeikis' character, to come to terms with his mortality, and hers — which he could not do. And as far as back as I can remember, because of this very intimate relationship I've had with God, I’ve been very much at peace with my mortality. I still feel that way. 
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On showing up and letting go 

What would you say it looks like to show up as your full self at this particular moment in history? 

It feels like it's still a mystery to me that I'm waiting to be revealed. I don’t mean I'm in a waiting pattern — I feel I'm living everyday fully. But I don't have a roadmap so I don't have a good sense of what this all amounts to. I keep wondering, What's the plan here? What is my place in this moment in history? 

If there's one thing we can say for certain, wherever this leads us, this moment in history is significant. In the same way that the people who lived through the Second World War lived through a significant moment in global history. 

...one message that Mystery seems to have been trying to get through my thick skull all throughout my life is that this should, this sense of obligation, actually comes out of my trauma and not out of my Dharma.

I do feel like I have a platform and I want to be a force for good. And I’ve always had these ideas about the ways I should go out into the world and make things better. But one message that Mystery seems to have been trying to get through my thick skull all throughout my life is that this should, this sense of obligation, actually comes out of my trauma and not out of my Dharma.

So then I wonder, What does it look like for me to live into my Dharma if not that? And right now I’m just allowing it to look so different than I have imagined. I’m trusting there is a design in it all that I don't understand, a macro view that I don't have, a larger wisdom at work. 

You can just never know the value or importance of some small action or seemingly innocuous idea. So right now I’m allowing myself to let go of my old ideas of how I should show up, and asking every day to be guided to where I really belong. 

You recently posted a quote on Instagram about the happiness that comes from letting people misunderstand you. That feels tied to what you’re saying now about letting go of those shoulds and expectations. 

You’ve spoken out at times — and remained silent at others — in ways that were unpopular and even heavily criticised. It’s one thing to be willing to be misunderstood. I imagine it may be difficult, as a passionate, empathic, public person, to navigate your own internal shoulds and the loud shoulds of others. How do you hold all that?

Do you have another hour? [Laughs] Let me think on that for a minute. First of all, I think it is extremely insightful that you connected the previous question to that quote because that is a really thematic part of this new beginning for me — and of the times we’re in. It’s part of allowing myself to let go of the shoulds and trust in daily guidance. 

[Pause] I’ll go back. At the beginning of the [Covid-19] lockdowns, I shared a post on social media that erupted and became controversial. It was the first time I had ever experienced anything like that in my career. And by virtue of being somebody who appreciates debate and conversation and who always believes the person on the other side of an argument has something to teach me, I just heard all the noise and thought, I have something to learn, so what is it? Am I wrong? Let me check myself. 

Now, I'm sort of playing it down — it was an extremely painful process to go through because it was very surprising. I didn't have my guard up at all so it really knocked me out. I tried to keep my cool and say, Okay, just check yourself. Obviously, you've said or done something wrong. Then time went by and I made a public apology of sorts. 

But over time, I started to realize there was so much noise happening around so many things, and that the noise didn't necessarily mean you were wrong. I was seeing it happen all over the place with people who I think have something of value to say, that I want to hear, but they're being told to sit down and shut up. And I realized, Oh, we're in a new environment. The world has changed. 

The expansion of the internet has just done something different to the social ecology and now we're in a totally new atmosphere to which I have to reorient myself.

The expansion of the internet has just done something different to the social ecology and now we're in a totally new atmosphere to which I have to reorient myself. I now understand that the signals I'm getting from the outside aren't always valid in the same way. Some are just noise. Some are propaganda. Some are the lowest common denominator. 

After all that, I started a new practice. Now, before I say anything publicly, I ask for guidance. Unless I get a big old green light saying, Yes, this is for you to say, I don’t say it. Even if I have an opinion, even if I have thoughts on it. Not everything is for me to say. And if I do get a green light, even if it scares me or it may be hard to weather the storm, I'm going to say it. 
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On courage, conversation and “trolls”

There’s one more piece I want to share on this. 

I’ve always had a deep respect for my fellow man, so it’s really hard for me to discount anyone's thoughts. You could read a comment on my social media and say, "Oh, that's just a troll." And I’d respond by saying, "But a troll's a person. I bet if I met them at the grocery store, I'd be interested in what they have to say.” 

So really early on, I developed a practice on social media for when someone said something awful to me. I would address them directly and publicly, and I would thank them for having the vulnerability to share their opinion and trust it was a safe place to do that — even if their opinion wasn't popular. I would look for at least one connecting point to who they were or what they were saying, to say "Yeah, I get it." And then I would tell them, "I don't agree with you in these ways, but I'm really glad you said it and I'm glad you're here." 

I found that every single time, without fail, it would turn what some would consider a "troll" around in either one or two comments, to the point where they would say things like, "I hope I didn't come across as rude.” “I'm sorry if I sounded mean.” “I didn't mean to offend you.” It humanized the whole thing because they were seen, acknowledged and heard. 

When everything happened during the lockdowns, I had been experimenting with that practice for a decade. I knew better than to just dismiss people who disagreed with me or didn't like what I was saying. But then I had to come to terms with this: if I accept the humanity of the people who attack me, and I don’t dismiss them as invalid, then how do I deal with the pain and intensity of their hatred toward me? 

So I started another practice of learning to sit with the fact that not everyone's going to understand me. Not everyone's going to know me. And that's okay. People can hate me. People can dislike me. People can misunderstand me. Up until that point in my life — all through the first half of my life — I really needed to be accepted. I needed to be liked. I needed approval. I thank God I'm in the second half of my life now where I can let that go.

What I hope the world is like in ten years is a mass exodus from virtual reality, whether that be social media or watching news feeds online or — I hope that people wake up to realize the real world is right in front of them, and just get into it.

On the future

What do you hope the world looks like ten years from now? 

[Long pause] What I hope the world is like in ten years is a mass exodus from virtual reality, whether that be social media or watching news feeds online or — I hope that people wake up to realize the real world is right in front of them, and just get into it. And I hope that, en masse, the people who own the corporations that are making billions and billions of dollars off of our attention are just absolutely left with their pants around their ankles asking what happened. Because everyone just got fed up and turned their backs on it and got into reality, into their communities. 

What makes you hopeful we could get there? 

What makes me hopeful right now is that I don't have a f***ing clue. So all the things that I think are horrible and going sideways… I don't actually know. Anything's possible, and I believe in miracles and in mystery. The fact that I actually don't know what's going to happen is a hopeful place for me.

I think it will require courage, and I think courage is in short supply right now. We don't have a very brave society. I believe that's partly because our children haven't been taught to be brave; they’ve been taught to be careful and safe. So they have this idea that taking any risk is irresponsible and unwise, which couldn't be farther from the truth. Because without risk we don't grow and we don't have the strength to step away from things that hurt us. 

I can see the desire growing to change things, and I can imagine it breaking at some point, and people getting fed up and revolting. If I’m honest, I don't think it will happen, but I can imagine it.

On playing and feeling alive

Today, at 44 years old, what’s something that makes you feel alive? 

Something in me really comes alive when I connect into Mystery through another human being. It can be as simple as two strangers seeing each other and smiling at each other. It’s like all my senses are heightened; I see clearly, I smell sharply, I feel joyful. 

And I’d say these moments happen mostly in Canada. As a Canadian who has lived outside the country for 20 years, what I’ve learned about our culture is that the rumours about Canadians being really kind is just utterly and completely true. More than any group of people I’ve experienced, Canadians treat one another as neighbours and friends. I’ve found so much more suspicion and fear elsewhere — you have to prove yourself to be treated as a friend or neighbour. 

Here, we’re more focused on the commonalities than the differences. We are less afraid of each other. We have this deeper sense of being part of a common thing. 

And what does play look like for you at 44? 

I love that you asked me that question. And I have to call you out as a fellow Enneagram One right now because you know the pain points for a One [Laughs]. I'm going to start with an untrue statement: I don't like to play. This is a belief I held for a long time — that I like to work, accomplish things, challenge myself and push my body, and that I derive pleasure from those things. But play? Play is a waste of time for me. 

I had this false idea most of my life because I was being sold a particular brand of play by our commercial, capitalistic society. Literal commercials, ads, TV, movies — pop culture — it all sold me this narrow idea of play. And I just didn’t enjoy the kind of things portrayed as play, so I figured, I guess play’s not for me. 

I am now redefining play. I actually just played last night! I could recognize in the moment that I felt delighted and was having fun, and I thought, Oh! I'm playing! 

What were you doing? 

I was having a playful, passionate, philosophical debate with my husband in the dark — just laying awake in bed in the middle of the night. [Laughs] At one point in the conversation, I said something like, “I think you need to stop talking now because you're sounding very stupid.” [Laughs] And what was so amazing — what made it fun and playful — was that instead of getting defensive and angry he got really joyful and animated, and, in this very passionate way, he doubled down on trying to get me to understand his point. And I thought, Yes! We're doing it! We're playing! 

We were debating with such a playful energy, where we could even jab each other and know there's no harm meant. We were just having a good time being silly— stretching our brains, playing on the edges together. And that is one of my favourite things to do to play. I love love love it.
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You were sure you had retired after Lost, and then you received two invitations that were Yeses for you. Can you imagine an invitation that would elicit another Yes? I know writing and directing are often very natural progressions in the industry. 

Absolutely. If I were to design it with my wants and desires in mind, it would be writing and producing. Directing is not a passion for me, but possibly a necessity because I might write something that I feel I need to execute for it to come out the way I want it — I am a[n Enneagram] One. But I also recognize that I don't know. There could be a role where somehow I end up back on screen again. At this moment, I don't want that. At this moment, I'm actively avoiding it. But because it is a one-day-at-a-time Dharma initiative [Laughs], who knows what island I'm going to end up on next.

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