DUJOUR – Don’t confuse Lily Collins with the period heroines she often plays in movies, the Rules Don’t Apply star is very much a contemporary woman

As Lily Collins slinks back into a deep brown leather sofa after the photo shoot she just completed, a beam of light catches a speck of glitter that remains in her eyelashes, creating an illusion of glamorous tears about to stream down her dewy cheeks. But if there’s any young woman with little reason to weep, it’s the 27-year-old actress who won the coveted lead role in Warren Beatty’s romantic drama Rules Don’t Apply, which could propel her to next level stardom when it opens November 23.

After all, as the daughter of British pop star Phil Collins and American antiques dealer Jill Tavelman, she had a rather privileged upbringing, spending her formative years in England before moving to Los Angeles at age five. She was presented as a debutante in Paris in 2007. As a broadcast journalism major at University of Southern California, she was recruited by Nickelodeon to report on the 2008 presidential election. She’s appeared in a string of popular films, including The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones and Mirror, Mirror, in which she made a picture-perfect Snow White. Her photogenic face landed her both a modeling career and a deal as ambassador for Lancôme cosmetics. Her lively social media accounts have millions of followers.

Despite all the spoils of her stardom, Collins did find ways to connect to her Rules character Marla Mabrey, a naive and virtuous beauty pageant winner invited to Hollywood in 1958 for a screen test by eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes. “She’s very open with her emotions and frustrations and how she feels about her insecurities,” Collins says. “I think her strength and tenacity is something that I could relate to.”

She goes on to divulge that, although she has been performing since she was two, she waited until she had developed enough confidence to accept the rejection that inevitably comes with auditioning before pursuing a film career. “I knew, just like Marla, that it was what I wanted. I knew it would happen at some point, but I had to be patient,” she shares. When that time came, however, the offers soon followed: almost immediately, she was cast in the 2009 Oscar-winning The Blind Side

It undoubtedly helps that Collins’ ethereal good looks recall Hollywood beauties of yesteryear, like Audrey Hepburn and Natalie Wood (who famously co-starred with and romanced Beatty). Surely, the resemblance didn’t go unnoticed by her director.

“He did say that I reminded him of Natalie,” she admits demurely, adding that this was something she actually wrote in her journal while making the film. “I couldn’t believe he said that. It’s such a huge compliment. To be in the same sentence as any of those women I greatly admire is a huge compliment.”

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