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'Okja' star Lily Collins says she's 'weirdly interested in food documentaries'

By Karen Butler
Lily Collins attends a screening of "Okja" during the 70th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes on May 19. File Photo by Rune Hellestad/ UPI
1 of 3 | Lily Collins attends a screening of "Okja" during the 70th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes on May 19. File Photo by Rune Hellestad/ UPI | License Photo

June 21 (UPI) -- Actress Lily Collins was recently asked about whether her work on the film Okja influenced her feelings regarding animal rights and eating meat.

Directed by Bong Joon-Ho and set to begin streaming on Netflix June 28, the drama follows Mija, a young girl played by Ahn Seo-Hyun, who is trying to keep a powerful company from taking back and killing her beloved pet -- a genetically modified super-pig that eats little, has a limited environmental impact and can potentially feed many people. Collins plays one of the animal-rights activists trying to help Mija and Okja.

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"I've always been weirdly interested in food documentaries," Collins said at a recent New York press conference, "so during the prep for this movie, I watched more and Director Bong gave us all this [Animal Liberation Front] handbook. We saw lots of really difficult images of animals and the treatment [they undergo] in facilities, plants and factories and I am not a red meat eater anyway, so it wasn't necessarily that I changed my food habits, eating habits, but I definitely became more of a conscious consumer in many other types of products."

Collins went on to say she loves how many themes and issues the movie addresses.

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"Nutrition and environment, politics, love, innocence lost," she offered. "There are just so many different things that could be taken from this film that I think are dealt with in a way that never tutorialize, but always just prompt conversation. ... I feel like what Director Bong is so amazing at is taking so many things and presenting them to you -- never telling you how to think, but, if you leave the theater thinking something, we've done our jobs right."

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