Lily Collins Reacts to “Emily in Paris” Golden Globe Nominations

Sure, 2020 wasn’t one for the books for most people. But it ended up being Lily Collins‘ year.

She spent most of it in sweatpants, like so many others, but that just meant she was extremely comfortable as the results of her very busy 2019 unfolded. The veteran actress and Lancôme brand ambassador heads into the Golden Globes Feb. 28 having played a key supporting role in the old-Hollywood epic Mank, which leads all films with six nominations, and as a nominee herself for Best Actress in a TV Series, Musical or Comedy, for one of the most talked about shows of quarantine, Emily in Paris.

“Words cannot express how extremely grateful and excited I am to be nominated for my role in Emily in Paris and for the show’s nomination!” the 31-year-old told E! News in a statement when she got the good word. “I’m beyond thrilled the series was recognized and I feel so lucky to be in a category including such incredible women who have kept me laughing and smiling all year long. The greatest gift of playing Emily has been providing a sense of escapism and fun during a time when we all needed it most.”

Lily did indeed provide people with a lot of joy (and serious travel inspo for…someday) and she was duly rewarded with joy—and a second season renewal. And before either production had even premiered last year, she got engaged!

It’s not surprising that they’re eager to tie the knot, Lily having written when announcing their engagement, “I’ve been waiting my lifetime for you and I can’t wait to spend our lifetime together” (and she’s really looking forward to having Charlie’s mom, Mary Steenburgen, and her husband Ted Danson for in-laws). But it would be a bit surprising to learn that Lily wasn’t the girl who had it all figured out at a young age—if she hadn’t already opened up about her very personal struggles in a raw, unusual-for-an-It-Girl way.

Born in Surrey, England, and raised in Los Angeles by mom Jill Tavelman after her parents split up when she was 5, the raven-haired beauty did seem to have all the elements in place to glide through life like a certain social media maven who takes the City of Light by storm. And she spent much of her formative life acting, modeling, writing (she made her on-camera debut in a BBC series when she was 2 and had an Elle Girl column at 15) and wielding a microphone—not as a singer, like her famous father Phil Collins, but as an on-the-ground host for Nickelodeon’s Kids Pick the President election series in 2008. She dropped out of USC, where she went to study broadcast journalism, but won the Young Hollywood Award for Newest Red Carpet Correspondent instead.

Though she has said that she never spent very much time in Paris before moving there for a few months to shoot her Netflix series, she had made some memories in the French capital, such as when she made her society debut at the Crillon Ball (now the Le Bal des Débutantes) in 2007. Phil shared a photo of their father-daughter dance at the event in his 2016 memoir, Not Dead Yet, a tradition that’s also been experienced over the years by Bruce Willis, Forest Whitaker and Sylvester Stallone with their respective debutante daughters.

After just one two-episode guest spot on the CW’s 90210, Lily got her big-screen break playing Sandra Bullock‘s daughter in 2009’s The Blind Side. She went on to star in films such as Mirror Mirror opposite Julia Roberts, Rules Don’t Apply co-starring and directed by Warren Beatty (for which she earned her first Golden Globe nomination), To the Bone with Keanu Reeves and the Bong Joon Ho-directed Okja. All the while, she also became known, if not more so in some circles, for her smart style and cool-best-friend-vibe Instagram account.

“I don’t know,” she told The Guardian in 2012. “I look at what I’ve done and I go: ‘What? Really?’ It still feels so abnormal not to have had to do those particular sorts of projects [kid-and-teen fare, that is] to get here.”

But the outward evidence of a charmed life didn’t always reflect the vulnerable person at the heart of it, so she decided to really introduce herself to the world with her 2017 essay collection Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me.

Having grown up not exactly famous but very much spotlight-adjacent and the daughter of a thrice-divorced father, Lily knew at an early age that there would be certain things that she wouldn’t want to share—such as intimate details of her dating life.

“I entered into this business knowing your private life can’t always remain private,” she explained to the Belfast Telegraph in 2013, when she was rumored to be dating her Abduction co-star Taylor Lautner. “I don’t feel the need to profess anything publicly or confirm something that in a normal situation you wouldn’t have to speak out about. If I’m out and photographed with someone, then that is what it is. We took that chance and, whatever… it is what it is.”

She continued, “That’s always my natural feeling. My family went through a lot of very public situations and I saw that side of it from a young age. My mum raised me to be normal, and I wanted to grow up and find out who I was and who I wanted to spend time with before anyone else did.”

Having spent her youth primarily with her mother and eventually shedding her British accent, it took some years to develop the sort of bond with her dad that she craved as a child. But they have a solid relationship now, Lily writing to the Grammy winner on his 70th birthday Jan. 30, “Words aren’t enough to express how much love and pride I have for you. After 7 decades on this planet, countless trips around the world, 5 kids, endless memories and a lifetime of stories… you’re not done yet! You mean so much to me and I can’t wait for all the adventures and years to come. I love you so much, to the moon and back again…”

In 2012, she told The Guardian she had fond memories of summers with her dad in Switzerland, where he moved after the divorce, and Christmases at the family farmhouse in West Sussex. “It’s the best place to be for the holidays—all cold and wintry. Love the food, love the tea. I still feel very European,” she said. And, despite her parents’ rough split, “I’ve only ever known growing up across different countries—to me it’s just fun.”

Pressed on what sort of relationship she really had with her father growing up, she said, “I know the truth and I know how it was for me, and I know how much I love my family—and that’s all that really matters.”

Perhaps the publication of Phil’s own warts-and-all memoir in 2016 partially inspired her decision to dig deeper and share that truth.

Writing about the end of his marriage to Jill, Lily’s mom, Phil—who admitted to cheating but firmly denied the prevalent rumor that he dumped his second wife via fax—reflects on feeling “so sad for Lily, who is trying to make sense of all this mess her dad has made. I will always be sorry for that. I know that confessing to these feelings will unmoor Jill and Lily’s lives, so I make the difficult decision to take the coward’s way out: I say nothing.”

Which is why Jill is the “total bad ass rock star” in Lily’s actual book. She traveled the world with her mom, and credits her in Unfiltered for not only always being there for her, but for exposing her and her friends “to people from all walks of life,” encouraging them “to step outside our comfort zones and experience the unknown.”

They were so close, she explained, that she felt both inordinately excited to venture out on her own and a little guilty for leaving her mom (though when Lily first moved out she only went as far as down the street). But at the end of every day, Lily wrote, “She’s my best friend, inspiration, role model, confidante, and partner in crime.”

Meanwhile, her dad “may have still been alive, but most of the time it felt as if he were completely gone,” she wrote. Lily recalls being constantly worried about living up to his expectations, craving approval that he wasn’t there to give. Not being able to tell him how she felt only made her angrier, and she says it took about a decade before she drummed up the courage to speak her mind.

Not that having one huge talk solved everything (dads aren’t always the best listeners, she notes), and Lily wrote in a letter to her father included in the essay about him in the book, “I forgive the mistakes you made. And although it may seem like it’s too late, it’s not. There’s still so much time to move forward. And I want to. I’m inviting you to join me.”

So, the situation was far more complicated than Lily had been ready to share five years beforehand.

No wonder she doesn’t find the accolades for Mank—in which she plays Rita Alexander, the stenographer tasked with keeping Herman Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) sober enough to hammer out the screenplay for Citizen Kane while laid up with a broken leg—or the prospect of all the Oscar nominations the David Fincher-directed film will get particularly nerve-racking.

“I’m just really proud to be part of such an amazing ensemble,” Lily said on Daily Pop. “And to be a part of something that people are responding to like this is really special.”

So after shooting both Mank and Emily in Paris in 2019, she wasn’t entirely averse to slowing down in 2020—though she hadn’t planned on quite so much free time. For instance, she was excited to inject more of Emily’s joie de vivre into her own wardrobe and there promised to be a long list of appearances for both projects, not to mention award season.  

“Aaaaand then we went into lockdown,” she quipped on Daily Pop. 

At least that allowed for some sweet alone time with her fiancé, whom she met in 2019 when she was cast in his upcoming film, Gilded Rage—and then promptly fell in love with him.

“It was kind of one of those situations where I knew the second that I met him that I wanted to be his wife one day, and so it was just a matter of when really,” she recalled on Live With Kelly and Ryan.

During quarantine he taught her how to surf, which, she told InStyle, served as “a fun way to get over a fear of failing publicly.” She read up on meditation (being able to savor the moment hasn’t always come easy to her) and listened to Unlocking Us With Brené Brown, growing ever more in touch with herself always near the top of her to-do list. And it came in handy to have a boyfriend who knew his way around a camera so, when W came calling for a story, he could photograph her himself. 

“I know it’s super strange, but I haven’t been stationary in one place for this long in—I can’t remember how long,” Lily told the magazine.

But though all was obviously going well 18 months into their relationship, she was still completely surprised when Charlie popped the question while they were on an RV trip through New Mexico and Arizona with their dog Redford. He had told their families ahead of time, but managed to keep her entirely in the dark—even when he was planting a camera to capture the moment for posterity.

“We all have our insecurities,” she told Kelly Clarkson. “For me, body image was a really big thing. I’ve been very vocal and open about my experiences with eating disorders and, just, now my fiancé is so supportive, and it’s about finding new ways to feel centered and not reverting back to old ways…We all just need to say, we all go through these things and we’re not crazy, and no one of us is alone. I think we all have those little things.”

And when Drew Barrymore asked Lily how she had come to be “this person who exudes and conveys kindness and goodness,” she again credited her mom for instilling her with her moral compass from the beginning. “I don’t know,” the actress said, “I’m just so grateful for every opportunity that I get and I’m just an innately happy, optimistic person, I guess.”

They both agreed that being born into that world came with certain advantages, but it also could mean that you feel the urge to prove yourself that much faster.

“It gave me such a drive to want to feel like I deserved to be where I am,” Lily said. “For a certain amount of time, a last name could be something that’s interesting but, at the end of the day, you’ve got to bring something to the table. And yeah, I maybe had to grow up a little bit quicker, but I was also exposed to the pros and cons at an early age and I still chose it for me.”

The people have spoken—23.1 million on Instagram and counting, 676 million minutes of Emily in Paris binged in its first week—and they’ve chosen her right back.