Guildford, Surrey, England, was the birthplace of Lily Jane Collins. Her mother, Los Angeles, California native Jill Tavelman, served three terms as president of the Beverly Hills Women’s Club. Her father is English singer Phil Collins. After her parents separated when she was five, Lily relocated to LA with her mother. She is of English, German, and Russian Jewish ancestry (via her maternal grandfather). At the age of two, in the BBC programme Growing Pains, in 1992, she had her first on-screen appearance. When Collins was younger, she played in the Youth Academy for Dramatic Arts, but journalism was her area of interest. She attended USC after graduating from the Harvard-Westlake School and majored in broadcast journalism there. In her teen years, she started penning a column for the British publication Elle Girl called “NY Confidential” and also contributed to Seventeen, Teen Vogue, and the Los Angeles Times.
She made a few appearances on 90210 (2008) in 2009 after making a few early television appearances as a presenter/reporter (for example, covering the 2008 US Presidential campaign as a host on the Nickelodeon show, Nick News with Linda Ellerbee: Kids Pick the President 2000). In the hugely successful film The Blind Side, she co-starred as the daughter of Tim McGraw and Sandra Bullock’s characters (2009).
More serious roles followed, and she gained international recognition when she starred in Mirror Mirror (2012). She then went on to act in Love, Rosie (2013) and The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (2013). (2014). The University of Southern California was where she studied. She has acted and modeled, as well as presented a number of television programmes. Her parents are Phil Collins and Jill Tavelman, his second wife. She is the older half-sister of Nicholas and Matthew, Phil Collins’s children with his third wife, and the younger half-sister of Simon Collins and Joely Collins, Phil Collins’s children with his first wife, Andrea Collins. Joely is an actress from Canada, and Simon is a musician. She is the niece of Carole Collins and Clive Collins and the granddaughter of June Collins.
She appeared in the Snow White and the Huntsman (2012) casting call but was defeated by Kristen Stewart. She then took Saoirse Ronan’s position in the movie Mirror Mirror as “Snow White” (2012). She was originally cast in Evil Dead (2013), however she had to reschedule, and Jane Levy took her place. She came in at number four on People Magazine’s 2012 list of the “Most Beautiful” Women in the World. She was the inspiration for her father’s Academy Award-winning song “You’ll Be in My Heart,” which appeared in the 1999 animated blockbuster Tarzan. In 2009, Maxim dubbed her one of the “Hottest Daughters of Rock Stars.” In 2012, she took home a “Pandora Breakthrough Artist Award” from Glamour. For a number of publications, such as Teen Vogue and Nickelodeon, she has worked as a journalist. Tori Spelling, who portrayed Beverly Hills, 90210 in 1990 and later made an appearance as a guest on the 90210 (2008) reboots, attended the same high school as her.
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