Lily James jokes she landed Cliffhanger reboot role as Sylvester Stallone wasn’t available
Opening up about becoming a big-screen action heroine, actress Lily James has joked she landed her role in Cliffhanger as Sylvester Stallone wasn’t available.
Lily James has joked she landed her role in Cliffhanger as Sylvester Stallone wasn’t available.
The 36-year-old actress is preparing to take on her first major Hollywood action role as she leads a reboot of the 1993 rock climbing thriller, which originally starred Stallone as its hero.
Lily told the People newspaper: “It is the most amazing film and I guess Sylvester Stallone wasn’t available, so they just thought… Lily James.”
She added casting directors in Los Angeles had begun promoting her as a “Sylvester Stallone type”.
Best known for roles in Downton Abbey and Pam and Tommy, Lily has been cast as Naomi, a woman whose family becomes the target of kidnappers in the new version of Cliffhanger.
The original film featured Stallone, now 79, as a mountaineer caught up in the hijacking of a US Treasury plane.
To prepare for the part, Lily promised she would learn to climb but admitted she almost forgot.
She added: “I was on holiday in Ibiza last year and I suddenly remembered. So I found a teacher there and spent weeks and weeks climbing with him for five hours a day and fell completely in love with it.”
The new film is due for release in 2026.
It marks a huge shift in direction for Lily, who has recently been promoting Swiped, a biopic of Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder of the dating app Bumble.
Lily plays Whitney, though she confessed she had never used a dating app herself.
She said: “I feel guilty and a bit of a fake playing this creator of these apps, having never really done it. But I did steal my friend’s phone in preparation for this film, for research.”
The actress added: “One of the long-term producers on this film met their partner on Bumble, and it’s pretty profound. A lot of actually doing this movie kind of speaks to people.”
Lily, who has previously been in relationships with Matt Smith and Michael Shuman said she preferred to meet partners in person.
She told NBC: “I am scared that we are losing this – a lost art of seeing someone in the bar and just catching their eye and going over. I hope that that doesn’t disappear.”
