Kate Beckinsale is a British actress.
Let’s find out some interesting facts about her!
1. Kathrin Romary “Kate” Beckinsale was born 26 July 1973 in Chiswick, London, England.
2. She is the only child of actor Richard Beckinsale and actress Judy Loe.
3. She is the younger half-sister of Samantha Beckinsale. Her father was of one-quarter Burmese descent.
4. She made her first television appearance at the age of four, in an episode of This is Your Life dedicated to her father.
5. When she was five years old, her 31-year-old father died suddenly of a heart attack. Beckinsale was deeply traumatised by the loss and “started expecting bad things to happen.”
6. Her widowed mother moved in with director Roy Battersby when Beckinsale was nine and she was brought up alongside his four sons and daughter.
7. She has a close relationship with her step-father, who was a member of the Workers Revolutionary Party during her childhood.
8. Beckinsale helped to sell The News Line, a Trotskyist newspaper, as a child and has said the household phone was tapped following Battersby’s blacklisting by the BBC.
9. Family friends included Ken Loach and Vanessa Redgrave.
10. Beckinsale has a paternal half-sister, actress Samantha Beckinsale, but they have not had regular contact.
11. Beckinsale was educated at Godolphin and Latymer School, an independent school for girls in Hammersmith, West London and was involved with the Orange Tree Youth Theatre.
12. She was a two-time winner of the WH Smith Young Writers Award for both fiction and poetry.
13. She has described herself as a “late bloomer”: “All of my friends were kissing boys and drinking cider way before me. I found it really depressing that we weren’t making camp fires and everyone was doing grown-up stuff.” “I loathed being a teenager.”
14. She had a nervous breakdown and developed anorexia at the age of 15 and underwent Freudian psychoanalysis for four years.
15. Beckinsale read French and Russian literature at New College, Oxford, and was later described by a contemporary, journalist Victoria Coren, as “whip-clever, slightly nuts, and very charming”.
16. She was involved with the Oxford University Dramatic Society, most notably being directed by fellow student Tom Hooper in a production of A View from the Bridge at the Oxford Playhouse.
17. As a Modern Languages student, she was required to spend her third year abroad, and studied in Paris. She then decided to quit university to concentrate on her burgeoning acting career: “It was getting to the point where I wasn’t enjoying either thing enough because both were very high pressure.”
18. Beckinsale decided at a young age that she wanted to be an actress: “I grew up immersed in film. My family were in the business. I quickly realised that my parents seemed to have much more fun in their work than any of my friends’ parents.”
19. She was inspired by the performances of Jeanne Moreau.
20. She made her television debut in 1991 with a small part in an ITV adaptation of P. D. James’ Devices and Desires.
Also that year, she appeared as a young woman engaging in a forbidden affair with a Nazi officer in the Hallmark film One Against the Wind.
21. In 1992 she starred alongside Christopher Eccleston in Rachel’s Dream, a 30‑minute Channel 4 short.
22. She made her film debut in Much Ado About Nothing (1993) while still a student at the University of Oxford. She then appeared in British costume dramas such as Prince of Jutland (1994), Cold Comfort Farm (1995), Emma (1996), and The Golden Bowl (2000), in addition to various stage and radio productions.
23. She began to seek film work in the United States in the late 1990s and, after appearing in small-scale dramas The Last Days of Disco (1998) and Brokedown Palace (1999), she had starring roles in the war drama Pearl Harbor and the romantic comedy Serendipity.
24. She followed those with appearances in The Aviator (2004) and Click (2006).
25. Since being cast as Selene in the Underworld film series (from 2003 to 2016), Beckinsale has become known primarily for her work in action films, including Van Helsing (2004), Whiteout (2009), Contraband (2012), and Total Recall (2012).
26. She also continues to make appearances in smaller dramatic projects such as Snow Angels (2007), Nothing but the Truth (2008), and Everybody’s Fine (2009).
27. In 2016, she appeared in Whit Stillman’s Jane Austen comedy Love & Friendship.
28. Beckinsale had an eight-year relationship with actor Michael Sheen from 1995 until 2003. They met when cast in a touring production of The Seagull in early 1995 and moved in together shortly afterwards.
29. In 1997, they appeared in a radio production of Romeo and Juliet. Their daughter, Lily, was born in London in 1999.
30. The actress has said she was “embarrassed” that Sheen never proposed,] but felt as though she were married. Their relationship ended in early 2003, after the filming of Underworld.
31. Beckinsale and Sheen remain close friends. She remarked in 2016: “He’s really dear, close family. He’s somebody I’ve known since I was 21 years old. I really love him a lot.”
32. Beckinsale met director Len Wiseman on the set of 2003’s Underworld. Beckinsale persuaded Wiseman to cast Sheen in the film, but, while on set, she and Wiseman fell in love.
33. All parties, aside from Wiseman’s then-wife, have maintained that there was no infidelity. They married on 9 May 2004 in Bel-Air, California. Beckinsale and Wiseman announced their separation in November 2015 and Wiseman filed for divorce in 2016.
34. She advertised Absolut Vodka in a 2009 print campaign photographed by Ellen von Unwerth.
35. She has also promoted Lux shampoo in a Japanese television advert.
36. Their relationship ended in early 2003, after the filming of Underworld.
37. Beckinsale and Wiseman married in 2004 in Bel-Air, California.
38. The British Heart Foundation has been Beckinsale’s charity of choice “ever since I was six years old”.
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