Evangeline Lilly

Lilly was married to Canadian hockey player Murray Hone from 2003 to 2004. She was in a relationship with her Lost co-star Dominic Monaghan from 2004 to 2007, and has been in a relationship with Norman Kali since 2010. Lilly and Kali have two children.

Lilly was raised Baptist and Mennonite in British Columbia. She has worked with humanitarian organizations, including the GO Campaign, and has been involved in charitable projects supporting children in Brazil, widows and orphans in Rwanda, and environmental causes through the Sierra Club. In June 2024, she announced an indefinite hiatus from acting to focus on her family. In 2025, she suffered facial and head injuries after fainting and falling into a boulder, and later said the accident caused brain damage.

Lilly began working in commercials and small television roles after being discovered by an agent from Ford Modeling Agency in Kelowna, British Columbia. Her early credits included non-speaking parts in Smallville and Kingdom Hospital, as well as an appearance on a G4TV video game news and review program.

A friend encouraged her to audition for Lost in late 2003. She won the role of fugitive survivor Kate Austen after competing with about 75 other women, although difficulties obtaining a United States work visa nearly led to the part being recast. Lost ran for six seasons from 2004 to 2010, with Lilly appearing in 108 of its 121 episodes. Her performance earned six Saturn Award nominations and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Drama Series, while the cast won a Screen Actors Guild Award for ensemble performance.

Lilly appeared in Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker and played Claire in the psychological thriller Afterwards in 2008. She returned to major film work as Bailey Tallet, a boxing gym owner, in Real Steel in 2011, opposite Hugh Jackman. The cast of The Hurt Locker won ensemble awards from the Gotham Independent Film Awards and the Washington, D.C. Area Film Critics Association.

In 2012, Lilly joined Peter Jackson's The Hobbit films as Tauriel, a Mirkwood elf and head of the Elven guard. Tauriel was created for the films and does not appear in J. R. R. Tolkien's original book. Lilly trained in archery, swordplay, and the Elvish language before appearing in The Desolation of Smaug and The Battle of the Five Armies.

Lilly began playing Hope van Dyne in Marvel's Ant-Man in 2015. She reprised the role in Ant-Man and the Wasp, Avengers: Endgame, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and voiced an alternate version of the character in the animated series What If...?. Ant-Man and the Wasp made the Wasp the first superheroine to be the titular character of a Marvel Cinematic Universe film. Lilly also appeared in Little Evil, Crisis, and South of Heaven, winning Best Actress at the AFIN International Film Festival for the last of these.

Lilly developed an interest in writing while working on Lost. She introduced her children's book series The Squickerwonkers at San Diego Comic-Con in 2013. The series follows a young girl who joins a group of strange outcasts, each associated with a particular vice.

The first book, The Squickerwonkers: The Prequel, was released in 2014. Lilly later published The Squickerwonkers, Act 1: The Demise of Selma the Spoiled and Act 2: The Demise of Lorna the Lazy in 2018, followed by Act 3: The Demise of Andy the Arrogant in 2019. She has identified Roald Dahl and Edward Gorey as literary inspirations, and Peter Jackson wrote the foreword to the first title.