10 Things You Didn't Know About Evangeline Lilly

By Sam Hill /

3. She Escaped To Rwanda When Lost Hit The Big Time

Back when Lost became, like, the biggest show on television in 2006, Lilly found herself ill-prepared for everything that went with being a successful actress and sex symbol. She felt overwhelmed by her new-found fame, in fact, and reportedly struggled to find a delicate balance with her new Hollywood life and her older, more conventional existence. At the time, she expressed her thoughts on her situation as such:
"I'm doing everything in my power just to continue to tick along as a normal girl. And fighting the weird, surreal insanity of what my life has become in just a single year."
Alas, her world came crashing down when she split from her then-husband, and in an attempt to escape from the mania of Hollywood, she fled to... Rwanda. Yep: Rwanda. "I holed up and read and wrote and prayed," she said of the time she spent in the African country. "I just disappeared off the face of the earth."