Lily Collins covers the September issue of Glamour UK to promote her leading-lady role in The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, which hits theaters (stateside) on August 21. I think this franchise has a decent chance of survival (that is, if one pits it against the likes of Beautiful Creatures with Emmy Rossum) but has a very difficult box-office act to live up to in comparison to the recent performances of Hunger Games and (especially) Twilight. Of course, Lily has recently expressed a desire to have a career like Jennifer Lawrence or Kristen Stewart, and I think (even in the case of self-destructing KStew), she’d be lucky to have either. Hell, any actress would thank their lucky astrologer to have the career of either JLaw or KStew. Even though most of us realize that KStew is pretty much over, she’s still got enough money to live comfortably for the rest of her grumpy life, right? That’s the ultimate goal.
Back to Lily though because this Glamour shoot is rather gorgeous. I absolutely love the dress and big hair on the cover, and the editorial is rather sophisticated in a city-minded way. Nice puppy too! In the interview, Lily still has the accusation of nepotism on the brain. As she claimed a few months ago for the stateside edition of Glamour, Lily is claiming here that her career has nothing to do with her father, Phil. She also talks a little bit about her boyfriend, co-star Jamie Campbell Bower (who played one of the Voltari in the Twilight Saga). Here are some excerpts:
How she deals with love scenes: “In terms of kissing, I promise you that it is super awkward and super unsexy because everyone’s staring. People are cast because they have chemistry. You’re spending 24-hour days together and it’s intense… plus you really get to know the best and worst sides of people — the rawest sides of people. You’re perfect for the role because you have that connection with each other and sometimes that translates into more.”
On the paps: “I had the experience with Kristen [Stewart, obvs] where there were paparazzi waiting outside a restaurant and we were followed afterwards, and I do think it’s such a crazy job to follow someone in order to get a picture. I get how much pictures are worth, but that is just so bizarre to me. I had something similar when I went to the doctor’s once. At that point I had only done two or three movies, but there were 15 people surrounding my car and I was freaking out. I found myself getting so stressed out that I had to force myself to put my seat belt on, because all I wanted to do was get out of there. I don’t know how some people do it where they’re pursued on freeways, but I have to remember to stay calm because that’s when really dangerous situations come up.”
Her relationship with Jamie : “I entered into this business knowing your private life can’t always remain private. I don’t feel the need to profess anything publicly or confirm something that in a normal situation you wouldn’t have to speak out about. If I’m out and I’m photographed with someone, then that is what it is. [Jamie and I] took that chance and… whatever. It is what it is.”
On the UK vs. the States: “People always ask if I feel more American or British. The truth is that I love the way of life, the humour and the fashion in Europe. I love the tea and the food. I feel at home when I’m back here: I feel like little Lily again. I love the casual, comfortable chic of LA. But at the same time I get to dress up a lot more when I’m in London. There’s this funky, fresh, young vibe there and people can be very chic in either a very put-together way or a grunge way. People are who they are and I like that.”
More denials of nepotism: “I never wanted to get a job because someone had made a phone call for me. Nobody has ever made a phone call for me. Weirdly, I enjoyed being knocked back at the beginning. Being told no so many times made being told yes that bit better.”
[From Glamour]
You know, I really hate to give Lily a hard time on the subject of nepotism. Surely, she can’t win on that topic, and she must feel the pressure to emphasize that she’s done enough work on her own to conveniently excuse the overarching presence of her pop-star father. That must be a tough hurdle to overcome, but I think any inconvenience therein should be negated by a few doors that were necessarily opened by her last name, right? It’s a conundrum, but I suspect that most of us wouldn’t mind the plight of receiving a career boost at the hand of a famous parent.
Photos courtesy of Glamour UK
We get it Lily, you didn’t have any help with the career you have today – you worked as a waitress and lived in a crappy apartment for years until you finally got your big break. Really getting sick of how she keeps trying to reiterate the point that she didn’t ride on daddy’s coat-tails at all, methinks the lady protests too much.
And why does she keep mentioning Kristen? You are never gonna be K-Stew boo!
I’ll say one nice thing though – this IS a gorgeous shoot, sorry for the snark lol but I’m quickly getting weary of her “I did it all by myself” schtick.
Even though I agree with you, I don’t think she’s purposefully seeming snarky though. Yeah she’s a little annoying, but not mean or anything.
Anyway, CoB is totally going to flop just like beautiful creatures and the host. It’s just not a great book series and you have to have good source material to make a decent movie. Of course twilight is an exception but that series appealed to dumb tweeny kids. This series just doesn’t appeal to that large of a fan base.
Oh no hon, I was apologising for MY snark, not her’s lol, she’s pretty harmless, just not very interesting and yes I think it’s going to flop too, I just can’t see it being as much of a success as twilight or the hunger games.
It’s not always true that you need good source material to make a good movie. There are some great films that came from seriously shlocky, poor material. Just as there are truly abysmal films made from great source material.
It’s upto the creative team to make a good film out of any source material they decide to adapt.
That said, not every book and or source material needs to be made into a film, However, the entire YA genre these days seems to be written with an eye to future film deals which is not good for the book audience.
Oh lol. Just shows how early it is for me :). And yeah, she’s not interesting enough to stick out
You took the words out of my mouth with “the lady doth protest too much” comment. And that always makes me think of Melissa McCarthy on SNL- which makes me laugh.
I’m sure this is the magazine’s doing and not her own, but when you are the cover star and STILL have to name drop someone else on your tagline, it doesn’t make you look too good.
I disagree with her that no one ever “made a phone cal for her”.
Those eyebrows dialed the phone themselves and arrived at the go-see 15 minutes ahead of her.
She looks gorgeous here!
I agree! She actually looks her she and its not try hard.
She wouldn’t have said career if she wasn’t Phil Collins’ daughter, just own it up. I said before, she’s not the first, and she won’t be the last. And she still gets WAYYYYY less of a boost than Will Smith’s kids, who are literally shoved down everyone’s throat thanks to their A+++ list actor daddy.
Why does she even mention nepotism? She does it all the time.
In another topic we have Condola Rashad, who is the daughter of Phylicia Rashad, but also a two time Tony nominee. I doubt she has to defend herself.
Let the work speak.
Spooks
That’s just it. Her work standing alone isn’t good. It’s ok, but not always that good. Her name is what opens those doors while better actors are left in the cold.
She’s a little delusional, but nice enough. It would only help her is she either stopped talking about nepotism or just slightly admitted it does exist, but she tries to leave it out of her own career path. Other actresses do this and they come off endearing.
She reminds me of Selma Hayek and her interview of how she moved to LA to be an actress and was so poor she could only afford last years chanel until she got more jobs.
Who is this girl……I want her eyebrows!
Nooooooooo not the eyebrows.
too bland to even properly dislike
Sure and Gwyneth didn’t get any help from her family and I’m going to ride my unicorn home from work today. I wish people like her would just own it and say …”sure, maybe I got a break in the beginning because of my dad but if I didn’t have talent I wouldn’t continue to be hired.” Not that I think she’s talented. I don’t really know who she is, other than Phil Collins daughter, LOL. I’d have a lot more respect for her if she said that.
This is how you handle the nepotism topic: “I can’t deny that being Phil Collins’ daughter opened doors for me, whether I wanted it to or not. But I’m working really hard to make sure that any advantage my parents gave me isn’t completely unearned.”
I get that she wants to be seen on her own terms, but pretending it’s not a huge reason why she’s as big as she is insulting to her audience and it makes her sound incredibly stupid and naïve. At the very least, at the beginning of her career it’s given the public a way to be interested in her without knowing her and given magazines something to write about, which is a huge help in differentiating her from all the other 20 year old actresses. Plus, growing up in that environment gives her insider knowledge, so she knew how to get started. Even if no one did anything so explicit as to make a phone call, she still had a huge leg up over everyone else in the industry. It’s patronizing to pretend that’s not true.
Your answer for the nepotism question is much better than hers. You should be her PR person.
And why do a lot of young actresses feel they need to name-check Kristen? Jennifer L I can see, but the girl who almost Mini-Coopered her career down the commode? I think they do it out of fear of Stewart off-the-wall fans. Staying on Kristen’s good side means they’ll see their movies.
And no mention of Taylor Lautner in the relationship or love scene sections of the article. It had been reported Lily and Taylor’s breakup was so bad it spilled over on the red carpet during Abduction’s premiere. I wonder if there are still hard feelings.
@aquarius I think she does it to fuck with Rob’s fans. Any mention of Kristen gets them all fired up!
@ aquarius64
Lily did more than namecheck Kristen Stewart in this interview. She admitted that she had lunch with Kristen when answering a pap question. Her answer and the Kristen mention seemed sincere since everyone knows Kristen’s ongoing struggle with them. I remember at an MTV awards thing, there was a picture of Kristen and Lily embracing warmly backstage when they saw eachother. It seems they are real life friends.
Yes – say that it opened doors, but you have to work to keep them open.
The more she tries to insist she started from zero, the less plausible it sounds.
This is a really pretty photo shoot though.
Yes! You are exactly right!
This is the best answer I have ever heard on this topic.
Unfortunately you rarely if never hear it from the actual people who should be saying it.
““I had the experience with Kristen [Stewart, obvs]… ” I wasn’t sure if this sentence was going to end up in a mini cooper or not.
It is a beautiful shoot.
The Host and Beautiful Creatures both flopped. I wouldn’t be surprised if this Mortal Instruments flopped too, despite having a following. The only teen series that seems like it will make it is Divergent.
She looks pretty here, and I normally find her very plain. She would come off so much better though if she copped to having a leg up due to her Dad, instead of her over-defensive attitude. I think even Gwynnie has admitted having famous parents helped her.
Yes, no phone calls. Just like Tori Spelling “auditioned” for 90210. She wouldn’t be where she is without her famous name. Just give Daddy credit, then STOP TALKING ABOUT IT. Damn, she’s pretty. Her eyebrows give me life.
is she a conehead?
She CAN’T ACT. She annoyed me in that Cinderella movie that she, but I was way more annoyed by Julia Robert’s annoying voice, so I kind of ignored her. She’s bland. She’s meh. She can say her lines and look pretty, but has no charisma. I think she’ll get jobs because of her name, but nothing high profile.
I wonder how many people who were the children of actors, loved acting, was amazing at it, but never did anything because of their parents? Like the child of a famous painter paints in his/her spare time, for only him/herself, and nothing is ever found until they died-but it was amazeballs. Does that ever happen?
I’m pretty sure, back in the day, she was featured in the Teen Vogue feature about debutantes at the Crillon Ball in Paris. So, she was out there from a young age, all because of her last name.
She is clearly very privileged, denying that makes her seem like she’s stupid, out-of-touch, or blatantly lying. She would be better off saying nothing rather than harping on about “I did it all myself!!!”
Maybe if she, I don’t know, did a good job, people wouldn’t care how she got started.
@H. Scott: +1…This and only this.
For some reason I don’t think this film will do well…but I could be wrong.
I’m sorry but I HATE her eyebrows! She seems to have small, delicate features with these two fuzzy black caterpillars running across her face, uggggh, it’s all I can see!
She looked so much better before she lost all that weight. She looks like a gross bobble head now
This chick protests WAY too much.
I love the movie beautiful creatures I didn’t read the books before I saw the movie I thought the actors that they cast for beautiful creatures were really good . So I was surprise when it didn’t do well I think that because twilight did so well studios automatically think if they do a another book series that it really do well always but it doesn’t look that happening for the another book series . I honestly didn’t see the big deal with twilight the movies were meh at best the actor were not all that good and the storyline was like a bad version of Buffy and angel . I think that Lilly movie has Potential to do good I just think people need to stop compare every book series to twilight .
Im a big fan of Phil Collins, hes a very talented & popular musician, got a lot of billboard hits during his heydays… though hes into music, I just dont think that his ^starlet daughter^ is as gifted as him…
in instyle she had an interview about how she started collecting DIAMONDS when she was a teen…of course all teens do that… she’s living in a bubble of priviledged delusion.
No, they sent an email for you 😉
Sidenote: They just announced their breakup about 2 hours ago.
Yeah, I just saw that as well. What is with this Jamie guy? Wasn’t he engaged to Bonnie Wright for a bit, then that ended as he was hearing up with Lilly C/aka generate pub for movie? I guess “engagement” is a fluid term! I could always buy this as a “show-nance”, but the split announcement now? I guess it really wasn’t helping tix sales, so why bother?
Wasn’t too impressed with this series- quit after 2 or 3rd book, but still hope movie does well. Don’t see it doing Twilight or HTG numbers.
I enjoyed “The Host”- so would recommend a viewing.
I saw the break up news. Breaking up before the premiere of your movie = showmance. Showmance also screams lack of acting skills to help sell the movie.
This was a showmance in the style of Robsten except no one cared, and so they stopped pushing it.
The ‘breakup’ news has to be officially denied seeing how badly these 2 are together on the press tour plus there are internet pics on most gossip media from last month of Jamie wrapped around some girl at a festival in Spain so it looked foolish to keep up the ‘dating’ narrative.
Also, I think he’s one of those actors who has set romances. He’s picked up a girl on each set he works on, and seems really intense and wrapped around them. Every.single.time.
LIES!!!!
Cassandra Claire/Clare is a despicable person who doesn’t deserve this film being a success.
+1. Bland, no-talent lead actors aside this movie should flop and get no sequels first and foremost because Cassandra Clare is a nasty piece of work. She’s a plagiarist, a bully, a liar and a hack.
I also saw the two newly released clips from this movie and oh dear lawd they are badly acted. They chop around too much and Lily’s delivery almost caused me physical pain
Hate to tell you, but sequel is already set to film- thought that a bit optimistic w/o seeing how first one did.
OT- what exactly did Cassandra C do ? Knew this started as fanfic, but the rest?
I love how they styled her very mod. As for the nepotism thing I think her name has helped her but it only helps u so much. Just cus ur parents are talented doesn’t mean ur going to be talented.