The Globe and Mail offers a nice profile on Evangeline Lilly:
Lilly, who is rumoured to be dating her Lost co-star Dominic Monaghan, was voted second on Maxim Magazine’s sexiest women in the world list. Born Nicole Evangeline Lilly, the five-foot-five brunette was raised Baptist and Mennonite and moved with her family to Abbotsford, B.C., where she went to high school.
After graduating, she says she worked for a “rinky dink” airline and later waitressed in Kelowna, B.C. It was in that picturesque town that a rep for the Ford modelling agency spotted her on the street and handed her a business card. Lilly pocketed it, and only pulled it out three years later when she was back at university finding it difficult to make monthly ends meet. She called the rep, who linked Lilly up with commercials and extra work, like playing a dead body in Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital. “I liked doing those things because I could hang out, do my homework, and basically get paid to study,” she says.
The Globe and Mail: Lost’s Lilly blossoms
