Evangeline Lilly jumps back into acting on her terms

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No one had ever said this to me before. In a phone interview last week, Evangeline Lilly – who plays a Silvan elf in the film The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies – told me the reason she quit acting for a few years: She didn't like it.

Given Lilly's career, which looks like a streak of home runs, I was surprised. Born in Fort Saskatchewan, Alta., she was tapped on the street in Kelowna, B.C., by a modelling agent, and soon landed a plum role – Kate Austen, the kick-ass female lead – on what turned out to be the highest-rated show of the aughts, J.J. Abrams's Lost. Next thing Lilly knew, she was living in Hawaii, working her tail off (she appeared in 116 of the 121 episodes), heading Breakout Star and Sexiest Woman lists and swanning down red carpets in flawless confections.

None of it made her happy. "I didn't like the majority of it," Lilly says. (At 35, she's a chatterer – forthright, earnest, eager to impart information, easy to laugh.) "I most certainly did not like any part of being famous. I didn't see the advantages as advantageous. And I had a hard time playing the amount of angst, fear, horror and sadness that I had to play on Lost. It's a negative head space to be in for six years, 16 hours a day. It wasn't healthy for me. And I'm a big believer that if you're not satisfied with your life, change it."

As much as she enjoyed the paycheques, she was careful to save them, right from season one, so that her acting career could end when Lost did. She turned her attention to other things: She wrote a children's book, The Squickerwonkers, based on a story she'd conceived as a kid, about a family of outcasts, each with a particular vice. She had a son, Kahekili (which means "the thunder" in Hawaiian), who's now three, with her partner, Normal Kali. And then Peter Jackson called.

Lilly was "gobsmacked" – not only was The Hobbit her favourite book as a girl, the elves were her favourite characters. She remembers lying awake fantasizing about being not just an elf, but specifically a Silvan elf. "I can't imagine any other role in all the world that would have made me come out of retirement at that time," she says. "I thought, 'What are these higher powers trying to do to me?' I'm a real believer in higher powers at work in our lives, and that things happen for a reason."

It was no small decision. Lilly's son was three months old; she was nursing "and my hips were still splayed," she says, which made her innumerable stunts difficult. Her character Tauriel (who is not in the book) is a warrior, so Lilly had to learn archery and Elvish. The final two films were shot as one, so she was on location for a year. And though she calls Jackson "such a good-natured, happy, funny director," she adds, "I think it's important to say that his creative style is total chaos."

So, um, fluid was the schedule on The Battle of the Five Armies that time ran out before they shot the battle – they had to film it during reshoots a year later. Then, Lilly and her stunt team would conceive and rehearse the complex fight choreography, only to have Jackson change it on the set. "Peter geeks out over the fights, he loves the blood and gore, but he wants to create it on the spot," Lilly says. "That was, for me, an endless source of frustration, because I'm a total perfectionist."

Her emotional state complicated matters. "Since having a baby, I have lost a significant amount of testosterone," she says, laughing. "When I was working on Lost, you couldn't hold me back from stunts. I was like a greedy kid; I'd get gritty and angry and give it my all. But now, when I try to get to that aggressive place, it's not available to me. I'm like, 'But I feel happy! I feel sweet!' And I kind of love that."

Despite all that, Lilly fell for acting again, because Jackson and his team were so collaborative, beginning with the scriptwriting, where she helped conceive her character. She likes doing emotional scenes to music, so he played her the lyrical Elven sections from The Lord of the Rings score. For the (near-constant) scenes where she vanquishes Orcs, he lined up strings of stuntmen for her to battle, including one who was 6 feet 7 inches, so she didn't have to fake her grunts and flexes. "That's why everyone who's ever worked for Peter wants to work for him again, despite the chaos," Lilly says. "He's so, so generous."

He wouldn't put her on a wire for stunts, however – too dangerous. "He did put Orlando Bloom up there. That pissed me off!" Lilly says, laughing. "But I understand why. The injury rate on this film was high. One stuntwoman, I cringe for her, tore her Achilles tendon, and that's a career-breaker. So I didn't get thrown against the wall. I did have my face smashed into the stairs, though."

Also, while executing a long Steadicam shot where Tauriel mows down eight Orcs, Lilly forgot to duck on one take, and took a punch to the head. "I thought for certain I was going to K.O.," she says. "But part of me subconsciously knew that if I did, that poor, poor stuntman would never forgive himself. So I mustered everything I had in me to stay alert, get back to my first mark, and do it again."

Lilly learned two things from The Hobbit: She'll only work on projects that are collaborative and fun. And she'll confront her fame head-on. She's created Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts, so she can get to know her fans "instead of being afraid of them," she says. "It lets me represent myself directly to the people who appreciate me, so I feel less out of control, and less controlled."

It must be working, because she went from Middle Earth into another potential franchise, for Marvel – this summer she'll be seen opposite Paul Rudd in Ant-Man. And she has 17 more Squickerwonker books mapped out, with plans for interactive iBooks and a potential film or television franchise.

"I know, I'm ridiculous," she says, laughing again. "A friend told me recently, 'You know how people have commitment issues? You have overcommitment issues.' I can't seem to do anything small."

At a climactic moment in The Battle of the Five Armies, Tauriel executes a jump that would make a pro basketballer proud. A stuntwoman could have done it, but Lilly wanted to, for reasons both practical and metaphoric. "There were no wires," she says. "It was just me. I just used my strength, and leapt."

She felt, she says, "redeemed. I went, 'Okay, I'm back. I'm back, and I'm bad, and I can do this again.'"