Lily is on the cover of Byrdie! You can check out some photos in the gallery, a video, and her interview below.

BYRDIE – On the surface, everything about my lunch date with Lily Collins appears normal. We’re dining in the outdoor restaurant of one of L.A.’s most storied hotels, frequented by Hollywood legends like Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, and famous for its ivy-lined walls, currently filtering in L.A.’s seasonless sunshine. But there has been nothing “normal” about the year of 2020, as the entire world grapples with a deadly virus, and the words “pandemic” and “contagion” spell out our reality (instead of an apocalyptic film featuring Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow). This explains why Lily, dressed in a pewter Maje blazer and dark jeans, is palpably hesitant when the hostess leads us to our table in the center of the outdoor space, flocked in every direction by groups of chattering guests. Los Angeles has only recently eased its dining restrictions to allow for outdoor service, and thus, something as “normal” as an afternoon lunch interview carries with it the added weight of months of social distancing, optics, and the unease of safety protocol (are the tables really six feet apart, I wonder…).

“This is the first time I’ve eaten at a restaurant since quarantine started,” Lily whispers to me, eye wide as we sit down. She seems slightly shell-shocked, which is understandable since the beginning of quarantine was in March and we are now dining together at the tail-end of October. I flag down our hostess and request a quieter, more socially-distant table. Luckily, there happens to be one in another area of the restaurant, and as we sit down, Lily visibly relaxes with a sigh. “I’m sorry, it’s just that I haven’t been around this many people for so long,” she apologizes, swirling liquid Stevia into her hot black tea. “It was a lot.”

Now that we’re alone(ish), I begin to experience what can only be described as the Lightness of Lily. I can’t pinpoint what it is exactly—her openness, easy laugh, or maybe just her smile—but there’s an unmistakable aura of happiness emanating off of her, made more noticeable by the fact that it’s so rare to encounter this type of joyful lightness during such a difficult year. Seconds after sitting down, she immediately dives into stories about her road-tripping adventures with her fiancé, writer and director Charlie McDowell. “It’s the best way to create a sense of adventure,” she tells me earnestly. “You’re taking yourself from A to B. You’re part of nature. We go camping and we’re in the middle of the Redwoods or driving through cities that we never would have gone through before.” She credits these road trips and moments in nature for keeping her grounded as everything else in the world feels so uncertain: “You’re literally breathing in clean air. You’re not feeling at a loss of creativity and you’re doing things with your hands and getting outside and building fires, and feeling really at peace in a time when there’s just been so much darkness.”

Each time her fiancé comes up throughout our interview, Lily’s face lights up. The pair was recently engaged during one of her aforementioned road trips through Santa Fe and Sedona, and though it happened after only a year and a half of dating, Lily says she wasn’t surprised at all by how quickly it happened. “I’ve known he was ‘The One’ since the very beginning,” she says frankly. “All my friends joked with me at first. They’re like, ‘How can you know’ I’m like, ‘I know. I just know.’” When the proposal happened—which she describes as “a surreal moment that you just replay over and over in your head”—she said yes without hesitation. She beams as she tells me this, then stirs her tea: “Can I just say? Honestly, I’m so excited to be a wife.” I ask her to expand. “I don’t think of it in any way, shape, or form to do with whether or not I’m a feminist,” she clarifies. “To me, it’s more like, I can’t wait to be with this person, and now we get to plan something that we’ll have for the rest of our lives.” When she explains it like that, it’s hard to argue. The Lightness of Lily—it flickers stronger.

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Lily graces the new cover of Backstage magazine. You can read her interview below!

BACKSTAGE – Lily Collins wants to tell a story. No, really—that’s why she’s Zooming from her Los Angeles home on a mid-October day, talking about why she became an actor. “I have always loved telling stories, since I was a kid,” she reflects. And as the child of Phil Collins and Jill Tavelman, it’s only natural that she got bit by the performance bug. “I knew that, as an adult, I wanted to take people on that journey with me. It’s a form of escapism. There’s such a magic to those worlds that we create onscreen.”

She’s been creating that magic for the last 11 years, from her feature film debut in “The Blind Side” to worlds horrific, thrilling, fantastical, comedic, dramatic, and beyond. She’s escaped typecasting, instead disappearing into stories near and far, past and present, each one different from the last. Her two most recent projects are both for Netflix, but they continue the trend of falling on opposite ends of the genre spectrum.

Just before the industry took a pandemic-induced pause in 2020, Collins was jumping between France and Hollywood—first to lead Darren Star’s “Emily in Paris,” on which she plays a millennial marketing executive who becomes a fish out of water after she’s transferred to the City of Lights for work, and then opposite Gary Oldman in David Fincher’s “Mank,” which charts the Oscar-winning screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz’s co-writing of “Citizen Kane.”

“I love every genre, in a sense. I don’t want to ever say I’ll never do one, because an incredible filmmaker may put a bizarre, interesting twist on a genre that you never thought you’d associate with, and all of a sudden you’re going, ‘I couldn’t imagine not being a part of this,’ ” Collins says. “I want to feel like there’s something I’m going to learn about [myself] through a character, and then there’s something that people will be able to learn about themselves.”

Collins’ bold beginnings in acting make it clear why she uses each role as a chance to learn. In fact, her whole career in acting has been self-taught. “I was part of plays and musicals when I was a kid, and I think I was 16 years old when I thought, OK, I actually do want to do this. Not just at school—I really want to pursue this professionally. I started auditioning for jobs to get more experience, but I was told no,” she remembers. “I mean, I was still so green. I was auditioning, and I didn’t really understand what ‘green’ meant. I would ask for feedback, and they would say things like, ‘You just need to keep doing it. Just train, in whatever way that means, practice, and do more research. You’re new, and that’s fine.’ ”

And while rejection is something most teenagers will go out of their way to avoid, a burgeoning modeling career and aspirations to become a broadcast journalist gave Collins some experience with the feeling. When she developed her acting convictions, she knew she’d be faced with more of the same. “I waited until I was at an age where I felt I was strong enough to continue to be told no. If I had felt that it would discourage me too much, I would have known to not pursue it, I think, but I really felt strongly about it.”
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THR – Hope Dickson Leach is directing the family drama, with Protagonist Pictures to shop the pic in Cannes.

Jack O’Connell and Lily Collins are joining The Cradle from The Levelling director Hope Dickson Leach.

O’Connell and Collins will play a couple not ready to expect their first baby as they track down a childhood cradle, only to make a discovery that will change their family forever. Protagonist Pictures will launch the project to international buyers in Cannes.

UTA and CAA are handling North American rights. The Cradle is adapted from the 2009 novel by writer Patrick Somerville, who co-wrote the screenplay with Dickson Leach.

The producer credits are shared by Gail Mutrux and Tore Schmidt for Pretty Pictures. Production on The Cradle is set for summer 2018.

Dickson Leach is repped by UTA and Casarotto Ramsay & Associates. O’Connell is repped by CAA, Conway van Gelder Grant and Sloane Offer Weber & Dern. Collins is repped by CAA, LBI, Definition Entertainment and Sloane Offer Weber & Dern.

VARIETY – Lily Collins will star opposite Zac Efron as the former girlfriend of notorious serial killer Ted Bundy in the thriller “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile.”

Voltage is handling sales at the American Film Market, which opens Wednesday in Santa Monica, Calif.

The film is told from the point of view of Elizabeth Kloepfer during the multi-year period that Bundy hid his murder spree from his live-in lover, played by Collins.

Collins recently starred in “To the Bone” and “Okja,” and was also nominated for a Golden Globe for best actress (comedy) for her starring role in “Rules Don’t Apply.” She will star as Edith Bratt in Dome Karukoski’s “Tolkien.”

Efron came aboard the Voltage Pictures project at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Bundy was executed in 1989. Shortly before his execution, he confessed to 30 homicides committed in seven states between 1974 and 1978.

Joe Berlinger will direct “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile.” The original screenplay, written by Michael Werwie, won the Nicholl Fellowship first prize and was featured on the Black List.

“Lily has very quickly distinguished herself as a major talent in a number of diverse roles in recent years,” said Berlinger. “I am really excited about taking Zac and this hugely talented actress to some dark but very human places they may not yet have explored.”

Efron was most recently seen in “Baywatch” and will be appearing in the upcoming James Franco comedy “The Disaster Artist.”

Voltage Pictures and Cota Entertainment are producing, alongside Michael Simkin and Jason Barrett of Efron’s Ninjas Runnin Wild. Ara Keshishian, Nicolas Chartier, and Michael Costigan will be producing via Voltage and Cota. Voltage is fully financing with Jonathan Deckter as an executive producer. Production is set to begin on Jan. 10.

Amazon has sadly canceled The Last Tycoon. I am very disappointed with the news. I wish we got to see more of the characters and the film Celia and Monroe were working on together. I loved the series and Lily’s role in it, sad for it to only have one season.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER – It’s the latest belt-tightening move from the streaming giant.
Amazon has canceled its F. Scott Fitzgerald period drama The Last Tycoon, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.

The decision arrives days after the retail giant/streamer made an about face and canceled another Fitzgerald drama, the previously renewed Z: The Beginning of Everything, starring Christina Ricci as the author’s wife, Zelda Fitzgerald.

Amazon had spent roughly $7 million during pre-production on the scrapped season of Z. The cancellations come as what sources say is larger belt-tightening going on at Amazon as the outlet looks for a large-scale hit.

The streamer is now beginning to rack up a series of one-and-done shows, with The Last Tycoon joining Z as well as its 1970s Newsweek period drama Good Girls Revolt joining drama Mad Dogs.

The pricey Tycoon was picked up to series last year and began streaming on Amazon on July 28. While Amazon, along with Netflix and Hulu, doesn’t release viewership information, the drama debuted to mixed reviews from critics (its score sits at 53 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 57 percent on Metacritic).

The series starred Matt Bomer, Kelsey Grammer and Lily Collins, and its nine episodes centered on machinations of the Hollywood studio system in the 1930s.

The show is based on the unfinished novel of the same name by Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise author, F. Scott Fitzgerald who centered the book on the character Monroe Starr, modeled after the producer Irving Thalberg.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER – Lily Collins is in talks to join Nicholas Hoult in Chernin Entertainment and Fox Searchlight’s J.R.R. Tolkien biopic.

Anthony Boyle, known for playing Scorpius Malfoy in the British play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, also has signed on for the film centered on the famed author.

In Tolkien, Hoult will play the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings book series that were later adapted into two Hollywood trilogies from Peter Jackson. Dome Karukoski is directing the project.

Tolkien, written by David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford, explores the early life of novelist J.R.R. Tolkien as he finds love, friendship, and artistic inspiration among a group of fellow outcasts. When the horrors of World War I envelope Tolkien’s life, they threaten to tear this “fellowship” apart and he questions the very meaning and purpose of his art. Instead Tolkien finds a way to use these experiences as inspiration for his famous works, among them The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Collins will play Edith Bratt, Tolkien’s great love, and eventual wife who inspired the elven princess characters in the Lord of the Rings saga.

Collins was most recently seen in Marti Noxon’s To the Bone and Joon-ho Bong’s Okja, which are both on Netflix after playing at Sundance and Cannes respectively. She is repped by CAA, LBI and Definition Entertainment.

WWD – Lily Collins had it easier than most imagining what life would be like for an ambitious scion of a showbiz family navigating the professional, personal and gender politics of Thirties Hollywood. In her new Amazon series “The Last Tycoon,” loosely based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel, she’s never far from the storied history that pervaded her youth.

Along with being a second generation star, the daughter of pop icon Phil Collins has been time-traveling to Tinseltown’s Golden Age since she was a kid, her mother Jill has long been involved in preserving, restoring and showcasing historical sites in the Hollywood region, including Beverly Hills’ grand 90-year-old Greystone Mansion, which serves as her character Celia Brady’s family home.

“I grew up spending a lot of time there; I used to run around the hallways doing homework and watching people in the house,” Collins laughs. “So now it’s like it’s gone full circle.”

Collins chatted with WWD just before shooting a scene set during the 1937 Academy Awards ceremony — in the same Biltmore hotel ballroom where those actual Oscars were presented. “It plays with your mind,” she says. “You look around and everyone’s spotlessly perfect of-the-period, and you really forget that you have a cell phone waiting for you at your chair.”

Chief among the series’ extravagant effects is the lavish wardrobe concocted by costume designer Janie Bryant. “Celia’s the fashionista, really, of this show, and Janie gets to throw lots of different things on me,” Collins says. “My Oscar dress is pretty amazing. It’s a lilac silk tiered number in the back with this amazing sequined capelet.”

The ruched bodice, puff sleeves and the A-line skirt were crafted from silk and duchesse satin.

Taking on her first TV series since “Mad Men,” Bryant was ready to immerse herself in an entirely different place and time. “After eight years, as much as I loved working on that show, I felt ready to design something new,” she admits.

“Everything about the Thirties is so different from the architectural, minimalist Sixties. The cuts, the parts of the body that are accentuated, the color palette. The Thirties is about being very soft and dusty, and silk charmeuse-y. Really, it is about the facade of Hollywood that the studios created, and all of the glamour that entails. They made sure the actors were untouchable.”
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DIGITAL SPY – Lily Collins has defended new Netflix movie To the Bone, and said she’s just grateful that a conversation about eating disorders is taking place.

The 28-year-old actress plays Ellen, a young woman with anorexia who attempts to conquer her eating disorder by entering an inpatient facility where she bonds with fellow sufferers.

Keanu Reeves plays the charismatic lead doctor, while True Blood’s Carrie Preston stars as Ellen’s stepmother. Collins – who has spoken openly about her former battle against an eating disorder – chose to lose a lot of weight to play the part.

The film has prompted a mixed reaction from critics and viewers, with some praising its positive message that recovery is possible, while others have accused it of glamourising or romanticising anorexia.

“I’m just so pleased that a conversation is being had around this subject matter,” the Okja star told Digital Spy. “I don’t think Marti [Noxon, the writer-director of To the Bone, which is based on her own experiences] and I started the conversation, we just made one a lot louder, and I think that’s really important.”

Collins also suggested that some people may have been put off before actually seeing the movie, and revealed the response she’s had from fans has been positive.
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SHAPE – Have you ever watched a woman in a movie get a beauty makeover and a new wardrobe and acquire instant confidence (cue the triumphant music)? Sadly, it doesn’t happen like that IRL. Just ask Lily Collins. To celebrate her debut on the cover of Shape, she went to dinner with two elementary school friends after the shoot and reminisced about how awkward they all felt about their bodies as teens. “We wore boys’ board shorts over our swimsuits!” she says. The irony that Collins, 28, was unwaveringly confident and at ease on set all day in one revealing swimsuit after another was not lost on her. “I never dreamed I’d be posing in a bikini on the cover of Shape. It’s a complete 180 for me. It’s a magazine about what it means to be healthy,” she says.

You see, for Collins, the struggle to get healthy was, and still is, real. And she’s refreshingly candid about it. Although she’s fit and radiant now, for more than half a decade she suffered in silence from an eating disorder that had her restricting her intake of food, bingeing and purging, abusing laxatives and diet pills, and perhaps more significantly, hiding it all from her friends and family. But after years of destructive behavior, Collins, who is extremely close to her mom (her dad is musician Phil Collins), realized that she needed to be held accountable. So she came out about her disorder. “My perspective on other people’s view of me was based on this disorder being a secret. But the more open I became about it, the more I was able to be myself,” she says. (More on that here: Lily Collins Reveals Her Past Struggle with Eating Disorders )

Speaking her truth to her inner circle eventually set Collins free to share her story with the world—and because of her journalism background, she had the chops to do it. At 15, she became a correspondent for Elle Girl U.K. (she spent a lot of her childhood in England), and in 2008 she reported on the U.S. presidential election for Nickelodeon. She was later a contributing editor for CosmoGirl and the Los Angeles Times Magazine. Her recently published book, Unfiltered, details her experience with her disease and ended up being “even more honest than I was intending,” she says. “I didn’t realize I’d cover so much.” But she was ready to talk. And that’s a good thing, because she has a lot to say. Here are the chapters on her recovery.
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V MAGAZINE – In To the Bone, Lily Collins plays Ellen, a 20-year-old illustrator whose battle with anorexia has brought her to the brink of death. Collins, petite even by Hollywood standards, had to lose serious weight in order to play Ellen. It’s the sort of role that someone who once suffered from an eating disorder, as Collins did, might shy away from. But she embraced the complicated challenge in a healthy way. “[The producers and director] were all female and they were very motherly,” she says. “We worked with a nutritionist, and [the weight loss] was done in a specific, calming, loving way.”

Collins read the script for the film—based on director Marti Noxon’s own struggle with the disorder—in the midst of writing Unfiltered, a book of personal essays. She had just finished a chapter on her eating disorder. “It was like the universe throwing it at me, saying, ‘I think this is something important for you to go through.’” Having overcome her issues, Collins is able to bring a sense of hope to the role. “I had all of the stages there to give to Ellen,” she says. “She doesn’t know how to reach them yet.”

From the very beginning of the film, there’s a steely strength to Ellen. The same can’t be said for other characters at the group home where Ellen is admitted. That’s the reality of addiction: many addicts never recover, but the hope is that movies like this can help. “I would have loved to have seen something like [To the Bone] when I first started having my problems,” says Collins. In the end, Collins lived with the character for the month it took to complete the film. “It was a really long month,” she says. “But how awesome to face a fear head-on like that?”

To the Bone will be released worldwide on Netflix July 14.