Evangeline talks about her cameo in “The Hurt Locker”

Before agreeing to a small cameo in Kathryn Bigelow’s gut-wrenching film The Hurt Locker, Canadian actress Evangeline Lilly picked up the phone and dialled the director’s Los Angeles home. The two women talked for hours – about the Iraq war (grittily explored in this movie), politics and life in general.

A deeply spiritual woman who was raised Baptist and Mennonite, Lilly says she made the call because she had to make sure the tone of the film was in sync with her own moral compass.

“I love the idea of doing this film,” said Lilly, a self-confessed tomboy who is nevertheless dressed demurely in a black dress and white wool coat. “But I told her what I fear is that you and I are in any way on a different page when it comes to our feelings toward this war. I don’t want to be part of propaganda that I can’t stand behind. So we talked for hours,” says the actress, who was born in the small prairie town of Fort Saskatchewan but grew up in British Columbia.

Starring Jeremy Renner (Lilly plays his stay-at-home wife), Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Guy Pearce and Ralph Fiennes, The Hurt Locker explores the daily work of the U.S. Army’s Bravo Company, who patrol Baghdad, trying each day not to get blown up. The film was well received in Venice, but, for many, is almost excruciating to watch.

Last weekend, Lilly flew to Toronto to promote two films at the festival ( The Hurt Locker and another drama about death, Afterwards). The movies are Lilly’s first features and they have been carefully hand-picked by the 29-year-old actress, who now gets offered dozens of scripts because of the success of her hit TV show, Lost

“For me, it’s so much more about, ‘Does the film in any way speak to who I am?’ Because if I’m putting my face and my name and my image to any piece of art, that art has to be a part of my soul and my spirit. And I have to be able to stand behind it.”

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