Lily Jane Collins (born March 18, 1989 in Guildford, England) is an Anglo-American actress, the daughter of Phil Collins and American mother Jill Tavelman.
She began her acting career at the age of two in the BBC series Growing Painsnote . When her parents divorced, she and her mother went to Los Angeles. There, she acted in some minor roles, and picked up an interest in journalism, writing for Elle Girl, Seventeen, Teen Vogue, and the Los Angeles Times. After majoring in broadcast journalism at the University of Southern California, she covered the 2008 presidential campaign (including the election of Barack Obama) for Nickelodeon.
Around the same time, Lily began appearing in some major acting roles, starting with the first-season finale of 90210. She acted with Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side, with Paul Bettany in Priest, and with Taylor Lautner in Abduction. In 2012, she played Snow White in Mirror, Mirror, facing off against Julia Roberts. She was not able to join the Evil Dead remake due to scheduling conflicts, but did appear in Stuck in Love, and plays the lead role of Clary Fray in The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. Currently, she is best known for her work in the small screen, starting with Prime Video's The Last Tycoon and continuing on with several Netflix productions.
She is married to American director Charlie McDowell (son of Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen).
Roles.
- Growing Pains (c. 1991/1992)
- 90210 (2009) as Phoebe Abrams
- The Blind Side (2009) as Collins Tuohy
- Priest (2011) as Lucy Pace
- Abduction (2011) as Karen Murphy
- Mirror, Mirror (2012) as Snow White
- Stuck in Love (2012) as Samantha Borgens
- The English Teacher (2013) as Marie Healy
- The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (2013) as Clary Fray
- Love, Rosie (2014) as Rosie Dunne
- Rules Don't Apply (2016) as Marla Mabrey
- Okja (2017) as Red
- The Last Tycoon (2017) as Cecelia Brady
- Les Misérables (2018) (2018-2019) as Fantine
- Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile (2019) as Elizabeth Kloepfer
- Tolkien (2019) as Edith Bratt (nee Tolkien)
- Emily in Paris (2020 - ) as Emily Cooper
- Mank (2020) as Rita Alexander
- Inheritance (2020) as Lauren Monroe
Tropes in her works:
- Big Ol' Eyebrows: Done in the style of Audrey Hepburn.
- The Danza: In The Blind Side. Lily Collins as Collins Tuohy.
- Dawson Casting: She was 21 years old when she starred in Abduction and 23 in The Mortal Instruments; in both cases she played teenagers.
- Romance on the Set: She dated Taylor Lautner after meeting him on the set of Abduction, and also her The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones co-star Jamie Campbell Bower.
- Separated-at-Birth Casting: In Stuck in Love, Jennifer Connelly plays her mother. Both have similar features with dark hair, fair skin and prominent eyebrows.
