‘When LA is your friend, it’s your absolute best friend’: Aussie actor Lily Sullivan on horror, Hollywood and fashion
She is the lead in the newest Evil Dead movie – and she’s Australian. Here, Lily Sullivan opens up about horror and the lure of Hollywood.
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Lily Sullivan is used to putting her body on the line – usually, though, that doesn’t involve being drenched in fake blood.
Wearing a scarlet-red-and black Gucci outfit on the set of Stellar’s shoot, the Sydney-based actor – who stars in the new horror film Evil Dead Rise – reflects on the role fashion plays in self-expression.
“I like the masculine with the feminine and the angular. In that [Gucci], I feel strong,” Sullivan tells Stellar.
It’s a theme that also plays out in her role in Evil Dead Rise, the fifth film in the longrunning Evil Dead franchise that kicked off in 1981. Sullivan stars as Beth, a woman who is reunited with her estranged big sister Ellie (played by fellow Australian actor Alyssa Sutherland) only for the older sibling to become possessed by a demon.
“[Beth] is a scrappy hero that I like to play,” the 28-year-old tells Stellar. “Horror is such a fun, evocative exploration of the familiar domestic situation. And then … [it’s] obviously torn apart and turned into your worst nightmare.”
Sullivan describes acting for the genre as “exhausting your nervous system and getting completely out of the intellectual and fully into the body”, so much so that it began to affect her sleep. “I had messed-up dreams,” she remembers.
“I had, like, an energetic washing machine of emotion. Pretending you’re going to die – the nervous system does not know the difference. “I can tell my body, you’re not actually about to die, don’t overdo it. And then I’d just start randomly crying. My body just thinks this is really, actually happening. I would look like a mad woman pretty much the majority of the day.”
After landing her big break in the 2012 film Mental with Toni Collette, Sullivan went on to star in the TV series Picnic At Hanging Rock and, more recently, in the Australianmade sci-fi thriller Monolith.
“I feel like I’ve been in a 10-year apprenticeship with acting,” Sullivan says. “And now, finally, [I’m] in a really wonderful moment playing two very dominating female roles [in Evil Dead Rise and Monolith] and leading an American movie. It’s pretty good.”
Now that she’s firmly on Hollywood’s radar, Sullivan is back in Los Angeles on the eve of the film’s release.
“When LA is your friend, it’s your absolute best friend,” she says. “But if you fall out of love with LA, it can be a very harsh environment.”
Evil Dead Rise is in cinemas on April 20
Originally published as ‘When LA is your friend, it’s your absolute best friend’: Aussie actor Lily Sullivan on horror, Hollywood and fashion
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