Lily Collins

Fame is in the family for Lily Collins, however she is forging her own path – with personal experiences that have shaped both her character, and those she portrays

INTERVIEW: LUCY ALLEN | ADDITIONAL WORDS: CHRIS UJMA

It’s been a busy year so far for Lily Collins. The actress, model and writer kicked off 2019 with the premiere of the Ted Bundy film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile at the Sundance Film Festival.

She then stopped off at the Television Critics Association press tour in California to promote the TV miniseries Les Misérables in the US, while this month, Collins is back in the spotlight, staring alongside Nicholas Hoult in Tolkien – a new movie about The Lord of the Rings writer. “Because I filmed three things back-to-back last year, now they are all seemingly coming out at the same time,” she laughs.

Collins, the daughter of musician Phil Collins and Jill Tavelman, was born in England but moved to the USA before she turned six and, now 30, resides in Los Angeles.

Initially, she went to University of Southern California (USC), attending for Broadcast Journalism before changing to Communications. Of her formative ambitions, she laughs about wanting to be, “The youngest talk show host – and my love of journalism comes from my love of meeting new people. Writing is just a way I get to explore that, while still acting. I never wanted to fully close the door on journalism, even though I’m following the path of acting now.”

While she is a published author (more on that later) she diversified into acting as a career avenue, and parental nurturing played a role in guiding her toward a career playing characters.

“My love of acting just came from when I was younger,” she reminisces. “My mom and dad would read books to me before bed, as a lot of parents do, and I would just kind of disappear in this dream world in my head, I guess, about what the movie would look like. And my dream became to take people with me on that journey and become those people.”

Now, in adulthood, she loves “Getting to learn more things about myself with the characters that I play, whether that’s a fairytale princess, or a literary heroine, or someone that feels closer to home to me, or someone who’s completely foreign. I think I choose characters that are going to teach me a lot about myself along the way, and that will challenge me.”

Does she prefer television or movies? “It’s completely different,” she admits. “Les Misérables was really great because it was a six-part miniseries, so it felt like a mini movie each time we filmed. Even though we didn’t have a huge budget, the production value was just incredible. So everything felt of quality – almost a film in and of itself. And I liked that you got to really live and breathe the character for longer than a movie would allow. But I still love movies. So I think now there’s less of a line between the two. I think so many actors are doing both, because so many amazing characters are on the small screen, and they have such epic qualities.”

The acting route led to her attendance at Sundance Film Festival back in a freezing cold February (not her first appearance at the Utah-based event). “It was really fun this year,” she says. ‘I went up for only one day of press, dressed really warm, ended up not needing my jacket as much as I thought – because when I was there two years ago, it was like a white-out snowstorm. So this year was relatively tame,” she smiles.

“I ran into so many friends and it’s a very interesting pocket of experience at Sundance. Everything happens within such a small space and everyone’s freezing cold. It’s camaraderie. And to attend in order to show a movie that is controversial, in the sense of its subject matter… Well, Sundance is an amazing platform for storytellers to talk about things that perhaps other places wouldn’t risk.”

There, she bumped into other old friends: “People that you see in passing, and it’s a reunion of sorts; a very casual festival. Everyone is just there for the love of their project or movies.”

Everyone has their own journey and their own process, and I think writing about it was just a very therapeutic way for me to be introspective about my journey"

Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me.

However she has her fair share of high-profile associations on set itself, having recently worked with Zac Efron on Extremely Wicked… as well as David Oyelowo, Dominic West and Oscar-winner Olivia Colman in Les Mis.

West, (she concurs with Keira Knightley), “Is wonderful… He’s such a jokester. We’d be shooting these intense scenes and he would lighten it up so much in-between takes, but also just switch into an intense vibe right away,” while Colman, “Is just so lovely and warm and funny. So to see her play this character, to switch it on and off between takes, was wonderful to witness. She has a wit and a charm and a nurturing quality that are so rare.”

A “big thing” for Collins, is “Watching how people interact with the crew – it’s not just the cast, the crew are the ones who are there before you and leave after you; they’re the ones that make it all possible. I feel so fortunate to be able to work on sets where there is no difference between cast and crew; everyone treats everyone equally, and it really sets a good, positive vibe on set.”

But her life is not all cinema sheen, nor has it always been; Collins is accustomed to challenge – personally, as well as professionally. Yes, she has a famous father, but hers is not a storybook road to fame – as her first literary outing, titled Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me, attests. The book delves into her experiences of addiction and eating disorders. “Both of my parents were really proud of me for writing it, for being brave to go do that,” she says.

Collins found the process, “Extremely therapeutic. I learned so much about myself in that process and I think it allowed me to come to terms with a lot, and to dig deeper into things that help me now with character work. It allowed me to let go of a lot as Lily, but also gain a lot of knowledge for every character that I play from thereon out.”

Of the book’s outreach, she ponders, “Everyone has their own journey and their own process, and I think writing about it was just a very therapeutic way for me to be introspective about my journey. Also, knowing how it didn’t only affect me butalso my peripheral friends and family. I better understand the domino effect.”

Though the writing process and book release were cathartic, she is not one to impart guidance simply because of the journey she travailed.

“I feel like I’m not one to give advice,” Collins confesses. “It’s hard, because I’m someone that just knows my own experience. People have come up to me and asked for advice, but I do say I’m really not one to give advice.”

The experience of ‘letting go’ has stood her in good stead when it comes to shutting off from character, and returning to herself. “Luckily, I’ve not yet had the problem of taking things home with me,” she reveals. “I think I like the idea of entering into that work space, becoming that character and that person, and then leaving that behind at the end of the day. It helps me compartmentalise more. But that being said, I also use my surroundings to help better the development of the character.”

She thinks back to filming the gut-wrenching demise of Fantine, still sharp in her memory from the making of Le Mis.

“When we started, it was in the dead of winter. There is a scene where I’m being dragged through the streets, and it was minus 13; it was snowing; it was the dead of night. I had no hair; there was no warmth; there was nothing. So, for me, I couldn’t necessarily not take some of that home, because it was just freezing where we were, and it was quite a depressing part of the story,” she explains.

“But I do everything I can just to go back to being ‘me’, be it FaceTiming friends or anything like that. I crave that separation. I think it helps me stay more sane”.