Fate helped Evangeline Lilly find way to ‘Lost’

[Sydney]

NEW YORK - To hear Evangeline Lilly talk, her path to stardom on the hit series “Lost” was almost beyond her control.

Perhaps a bit like her character, Kate, and the rest of the “Lost” castaways who — submitting to a grand plan, or was it just bum luck? — crashed at the obscure Pacific isle where the ABC thriller (9 p.m. EST Wednesday) has stranded them.

Granted, Kate was aboard doomed Oceanic Air flight 815 in handcuffs, a fugitive from justice. She was being brought back to the U.S. from Australia to stand trial when the jet tore apart in midair.

Nothing so tumultuous for Lilly.While enrolled at Vancouver’s University of British Columbia just a few years ago, the Alberta, Canada native was a budding actress pulling in good money doing TV commercials. Even at this early stage, stardom seemed foretold. Until Lilly, unhappy with acting, bailed out.Then, in a bizarre display of self-demotion, she happily took work as a movie extra.“Being an extra, ironically, turned out to be something I loved,” she says with a laugh. “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!”Never mind the pay was a fraction of what she made before. Her new plan fit perfectly with school (she was studying international relations). More to the point, she didn’t like modeling and acting in commercials. It felt like a meat market. Demeaning.

Still, her agent kept pressing her to try for roles in TV shows or films.

Getting ‘Lost’
As Lilly tells it, she finally saw the light when a friend observed how “you claim to believe in destiny, and yet you’re ignoring what appears to be all the signs of destiny. Doors are opening for you, but you’re afraid of your own success.”

“That struck a nerve in me,” Lilly recalls, “and I burst into tears.”

In January 2004, she went on the first of a couple dozen auditions


“By March, I was in Hawaii filming the ‘Lost’ pilot.”

There, to her surprise, she fell in love with acting. But she also learned that, on “Lost,” it wouldn’t just be viewers who were challenged by the mystery and myth. With a tale this complicated, murky and piecemeal, even the actors are often forced to play a guessing game.

For instance, when filming the pilot, Lilly realized what she knew about her character came down to this: Good-looking gal on a plane in handcuffs with a secret.

She remembers imploring J.J. Abrams, the series’ mastermind, to relinquish a few more clues: “C’mon, give me a ballpark idea: Am I a fireworks smuggler or a murderer?”

All in good time.http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11861942/