Evangeline Lilly Once Called Hugh Jackman Her ‘Life-Size Pregnancy Test’
Hugh Jackman and Evangeline Lilly once worked together on the 2011 sci-fi film Real Steel. While filming, there was a moment between the two stars that helped Lilly realize with absolute certainty she was pregnant.
How many children does Evangeline Lilly have?
Lilly shares two children with her partner and fellow actor Norman Kali. She had her first born in 2011, then gave birth to a second child four years later in 2015. For Lilly, both pregnancies came with its own set of challenges, with her second pregnancy being slightly more difficult than her first.
“My first one, I was 30, now I’m 35. I’m much more tired this time. The last time I was off work, I had no children, I had a partner who was busy working 18 hours a day, so I had all day to meditate and love on my baby and just be pregnant,” she once said in an interview with People.
At the same time, however, the Lost actor shared that being pregnant was something she enjoyed. Especially since having many children was always a priority for her.
“What I wanted originally was six kids. I frickin’ love being pregnant. I’m one of the lucky women who just had a blissful pregnancy, but I wanted to adopt four. My partner and I have really been through the ringer in the adoption world and it’s hard, so we’ll see what happens. Life is magically beautiful, and it brings you what is perfect,” Lilly once told Ocean Drive (via HuffPost).
Hugh Jackman helped Evangeline Lilly discover she was pregnant
Lilly wasn’t completely certain about her first pregnancy right away. She was on the set of the 2011 movie Real Steel when she discovered she might have been expecting her first child. Her co-star, Hugh Jackman, played a huge role in helping her realize she was going to be a mother.
“Hugh Jackman was my life-size pregnancy test,” she once said according to Contact Music. “When I was shooting my last scene in the film, I was about a month pregnant and I was 99% sure I was pregnant but I had just come back from Africa and I wasn’t sure if I was feeling sick because I had malaria or because I was pregnant.”
Fortunately, it was a scene she did with the X-Men star that took away all skepticism about her pregnancy.
“I had to do this scene where I jump into Hugh’s arms, which is not a bad thing to do unless you’re a month pregnant…I run up to him and I leap up onto him and as I do so it feels like my stomach tears…it just felt like it ripped open,” she continued. “They were like, ‘Ok, that’s a greay rehearsal, let’s do that again..’ It was really painful and at that moment I knew, I’m pregnant!”
Evangeline Lilly once shared it took her two years to shed her baby weight
Some actors take no time at all to shed their baby weight after their pregnancy. Lilly, however, decided to take her time with getting back into the shape she had before giving birth. Although she had nothing against actors who rushed to lose their baby weight, Lilly preferred a more patient approach.
“You see those headlines that say, ‘I lost my baby weight in three months!’ And I used to read that and I would think, why would you want to lose your baby weight in three months? Don’t you need that?” she told USA Today. “I was a nursing mom, so I needed that fat.”
The Ant-Man star chose to focus more on nursing her newborn than on her physique. After nearly a year of spending quality time with her children, she began working on her body. The process took two years.
“And I felt really good about two years! I felt like two years made sense to me,” she added.
