Evangeline Lilly: Ant-Man’s Aide

By: Lynn Barker

Feisty actress Evangeline Lilly of TV’s classic “Lost”, played elf Tauriel in the recent “Hobbit” films and this week, takes on her mega evil boss to save the day as Hope Pym in Marvel’s Ant-Man.

Hope is the executive scientist daughter of Hank Pym (played by Michael Douglas) a scientist/inventor who created a serum that allows humans to shrink to ant size. Hank and daughter Hope are estranged since Hope’s mom died under mysterious circumstances. Can they mend their emotional break in order to help Scott Lang (played in the film by Paul Rudd) become superhero Ant-Man?

Outspoken Evangeline, who has been in some all guy casts before, admits she had a crush on Paul Rudd in the classic film Clueless. She had some cool things to say about female characters in films and girl power! When a reporter asked Paul Rudd what drew him to play Ant-Man, Evangeline piped in with “Me!”

Q: Hope is a strong character. She’s going to appeal to a lot of women movie-goers.

• Evangeline: Amen and touché, sister. I think that there is a lot of excitement in the focus groups that we’ve seen already with the female audiences, about this character in general, and about the fact that Marvel are really, really taking female characters very seriously and looking at their lineup you can see that they have great intentions.
• As a woman who came into a predominantly male film, I had a great time working with (Director) Peyton (Reed) and with the producers on this character because I could see a hunger in them to really, really do right by Hope and do right by their female fans and the female audience. And you know, when I pick a role, one of the things that I aspire to is that somebody’s parent will come up to me after the film has come out and say, “My daughter idealizes that character. You’re her hero.” And that’s what we aim for, especially in this brand, right? We’re in the business of making heroes.

Q: Now that Ant-Man will be an Avenger and has conquered most of his fear, which Avenger should Ant-Man try to keep calm?

• Evangeline: I think he should help the Hulk calm down when he’s big

Q: That makes great sense! It’s pretty clear that Hope stands out as the biggest badass in the entire film but, so far, she doesn’t even have a superhero costume. Talk more about how you love the example she sets for girls.

• Evangeline: That was the most exciting thing for me about the role, and you know, of course while we were filming during post-production there was a lot of buzz on the internet  “Is Evangeline playing the Wasp, and is she a superhero?”, and I had a lot of questions directed my way about that. I just couldn’t have felt more comfortable or more happy saying, “Actually, she is just a really capable, very powerful force to be reckoned with and she doesn’t have a superpower and she doesn’t put on a fancy suit and look dorky in it”.

Q: Yeah. She is powerful without it.

• Evangeline: Yeah. My super-suit was my regular suit that I would go to work in and be a high level scientist and on the chair of the board of a very, very powerful corporation, and I do think that’s a fantastic example for young women.

Q: Isn’t that a Marvel goal, to empower young women?

• Evangeline: Marvel are actually doing this incredible campaign right now where they’ve put out a competition to young women in America to create scientific gadget projects and they’re promoting the maths and sciences for young women and young girls. They’ve put a lot of heart and love into that and they did it last year also.  I was happy to be the face for that campaign. You know, playing a female scientist in a world where mostly scientists are men is a great role to play.

Ant-Man is in theaters July 17^th!