Actress Evangeline Lilly has been known to be picky when it comes to film roles. A naturally private person, the “LOST” star is reportedly hard to approach for casting. As it turns out, she was approached by co-star Hugh Jackman while the two were filming “Real Steel.” Lilly recently revealed Jackman gauged her interest on being cast in one of the X-Men films. The answer was a resounding “no”, and apparently Lilly took very little time to decide.
“[He] was like, ‘Hey, so, the X-Men guys are asking me if I would approach you because they know that you won’t talk to anybody,” she told the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “They knew I was working with you and were interested to know if it would ever interest you to do an X-Men thing.” It wasn’t the first time Lilly turned down superhero roles. But apparently she felt like a jerk refusing someone as prolific as Wolverine. But hero movies had never interested her.
Marvel Studios Changed Her Mind
Lilly had been approached by Joss Whedon to star in “Wonder Woman,” (theoretically his Adrienne Pallacki project). Lilly refused. She was unimpressed with the film, and had no interest in becoming part of the DC universe. It didn’t “grab her;” she has always been one to follow her heart on roles. Whedon supposedly didn’t take kindly to her blatant disinterest, but that’s never bothered her.
“I was okay with burning bridges…I was okay with not having everyone in Hollywood wanna work with me.” Lilly chalks some of that attitude up to her youth at the time, citing herself as being “too young to be that polite” and feign enthusiasm for something that held no interest for her.
Her tune has changed since, as she was cast as Janet Van Dyne, aka The Wasp, in Marvel Studios’ “Ant-Man” films. After urging her to take in some superhero flicks, Lilly’s agent converted her. “I often was very critical of them…Like, I was known to mock them and treat them as lower forms of entertainment until Marvel came around…When I did, I was like, ‘Oh, they’re doing something very different and very cool.’”
It does make us wildly curious as to what character the “X-Men” crew would have wanted her for, though.
