In the 2026 reboot of Cliffhanger, acting director Lily James reprises her brave new role as a mountaineering action hero while also playing Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder of Bumble, in the biopic Swiped.
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 to climb a mountain to get Naomi’s job, whose family is being taken by a group of kidnappers.
Rocky star Sly, 79, is a mountaineer who is involved in the US Treasury plane hijacking in the original movie. For the 2026 film, Lily promised to learn how to climb, but later admitted she had forgotten.
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She continued, “I was on vacation in Ibiza last year and I remembered. So I went there, found a teacher, spent weeks and weeks climbing with him for five hours a day, and fell in love with it.
For Lily, who was in New York this week to promote Swiped, a biopic about Bumble dating app founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, Cliffhanger is undoubtedly a change of pace and setting.
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.
However, I did steal my friend’s phone to conduct research for this movie. She said that a lot of the actual acting in this movie kind of resonates with viewers.
One of the long-term producers of this movie met their long-term partner on Bumble, she continued. “It’s pretty profound.
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 claimed on NBC, “I’m afraid that we are losing this – a lost art of peering into people and running over them.” That won’t disappear, I hope.
The 2025 biographical drama Swiped, starring Lily, follows Whitney Wolfe Herd, the creator of the dating apps Tinder and Bumble. It is based on the true story of the founder of Tinder and Bumble.
Her other film credits include Mamma Mia! and Baby Driver (2016). 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.
She started her career with the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 2010, where she received her diploma, and later appeared in Secret Diary of a Call Girl in 2012. From 2012 to 2015, she served as the main character on Downton Abbey.
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Source: Mirror
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