Albert Michael/startraksphoto.comWhen it comes to expressing her concerns over being in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit, Evangeline Lilly is certainly not lost for words.
The actress, who as any die-hard fan of Middle-earth knows, is currently in New Zealand working on the upcoming two-part prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
However, Lilly is feeling some trepidation over how folks will react to her woodland elf Tauriel, a character not in the book, but created specifically for celluloid.
"I am very concerned to this day that people will watch the film and I'll be the black mark on the film," she tells SFX while promoting her next feature, Real Steel. "I know how adamant the purists are, and I'm one of them!"
Yet Lilly, who reveals she's been a fan of the books since she was 13, understands why Jackson & Co. opted to expand on the tale a bit.
"Upon reading The Hobbit again, as an adult, I can see why additional characters were needed to round out the story as an adaptation—especially female characters!" she says. "The Hobbit didn't include female characters at all. What they have done is all in perfect keeping with Tolkien's world, while adding a third dimension to an otherwise very two-dimensional story."
The highly anticipated first part, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, is scheduled to hit theaters on Dec. 14, 2012, with the sequel, The Hobbit: There and Back Again, due out Dec. 13, 2013.