Lily James marks major career milestone as she follows in Sylvester Stallone's footsteps

Lily James is set to scale new heights as Hollywood’s latest action hero. The Downton Abbey actress, 36, stars in a reboot of Sylvester Stallone’s gripping 1993 thriller, Cliffhanger.

Lily said: “It is the most amazing film and I guess Sylvester ­Stallone wasn’t available, so they just thought… Lily James.”
The actress, who played Pamela Anderson in the TV drama Pam & Tommy, said casting agents in Los Angeles are now promoting her as a “Sylvester Stallone type”.

But she had a mountain to climb to land the role of Naomi, whose family is targeted by a gang of kidnappers.

In the original film, Rocky star Sly, 79, is a mountaineer caught up in the hijacking of a US Treasury plane. Lily promised to learn how to climb for the film, due out in 2026, but later admitted she had forgotten.

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She said: “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.”

Cliffhanger is certainly a change of pace and setting for Lily, who was in New York this week to promote Swiped – a biopic of Bumble dating app founder Whitney Wolfe Herd.

Lily plays Herd, but admitted she has never used a dating app. She admitted: “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. A lot of actually doing this movie kind of speaks to people,” she said.

“One of the long-term producers on this film met their partner on Bumble, and it’s pretty profound," she added.

Lily, who has previously dated Doctor Who star Matt Smith and more recently Queens of the Stone Age rocker Michael Shuman, said that she preferred meeting men more organically.

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.”

Lily is the star of the 2025 biographical drama Swiped, which is about the real-life story of Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder of the dating apps Tinder and Bumble.

Her other film credits include Baby Driver (2017), Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018), Yesterday (2019), and The Iron Claw (2023).

Lily's professional acting career started in 2010 with her television debut in the BBC production Just William.

After studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she graduated in 2010, she went on to have a role in Secret Diary of a Call Girl in 2011 and became a main character in Downton Abbey from 2012 to 2015.

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