Lily calls on her own experience

PLAYING an anorexia sufferer in new film To The Bone was a particularly personal experience for Phil Collins’s daughter Lily, after revealing she herself suffered from eating disorders while growing up.

Portraying Ellen, who has already attended four treatment centres and is now in her fifth and final facility as an inpatient, the 27-year-old has spoken of how her own struggle with food took over her life.

“I suffered with eating disorders when I was a teenager as well… it was an entire physical and emotional experience,” said Lily at the Sundance Film Festival which took place in Utah over the weekend.

“It is a topic that is taboo, I think, with young girls, and it is really important to tell a story with this subject matter,” the actress and model, who recently received a Best Actress in a Musical nomination at the Golden Globes, added. She hopes taking on the harrowing role will serve as some sort of a cathartic experience, allowing her to better come to terms with the demons of her past: “This was definitely a more dramatic role for me. I wrote a book last year and I wrote my chapter on my experiences a week before I got [writer-director Marti Noxon’s] script. “It was like the universe putting these things in my sphere to help me face a fear that I used to have. It did require a different set of emotional skills, to go back in time for me, with my experiences. So definitely very, very personal.”