Kathrin Romary "Kate" Beckinsale (born 26 July 1973) is an English actress. After some minor television roles, she made her film debut in Much Ado About Nothing (1993) while still a student at Oxford University. 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. 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 a breakout year in 2001 with starring roles in the war epic Pearl Harbor and the romantic comedy Serendipity. She built on this success with appearances in the bio-pic The Aviator (2004) and the comedy Click (2006).
Beckinsale became known as an action star following an appearance in 2003's Underworld and has since starred in many action films, including Van Helsing (2004), Underworld: Evolution (2006), Whiteout (2009), Contraband (2012), and Underworld: Awakening (2012). She also makes occasional appearances in smaller dramatic projects such as Snow Angels (2007), Winged Creatures (2008), Nothing but the Truth (for which she earned a Critic's Choice Award nomination in 2008) and Everybody's Fine (2009). Her next onscreen appearance will be in the sci-fi action remake Total Recall, due for release in August 2012.
Beckinsale is the only child of actor Richard Beckinsale (1947–1979) and actress Judy Loe and was raised in London. She had an eight-year relationship with Welsh actor Michael Sheen from 1995 until 2003; they have one daughter. She married American film director Len Wiseman in 2004 and they live in Brentwood, Los Angeles. Publications such as Esquire and People Magazine have repeatedly included Beckinsale in their annual rankings of the world's sexiest and most beautiful women. She has worked occasionally as a model in television and print campaigns to promote Gap denim, Diet Coke, Absolut Vodka and Lux shampoo.
Kathrin Romary Beckinsale was born in London, England. She is the only child of actor Richard Beckinsale and actress Judy Loe. Through her paternal great-grandfather, Beckinsale has Burmese ancestry. She made her first television appearance at the age of four, in an episode of This is Your Life dedicated to her father. 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". While she has seen her father "more on television than I have in life," "there are certainly enough memories for me not to feel that it's somebody I didn't know." Her widowed mother moved in with director Roy Battersby when Beckinsale was nine and she was raised alongside his four sons and daughter. She has a close relationship with her step-father: "I couldn't have knitted a better one ... He wasn't pushy, he let me come to him." She has a paternal half-sister, actress Samantha Beckinsale, but they have not had regular contact.
Beckinsale was educated at Godolphin and Latymer School in West London and was involved with the Orange Tree Youth Theatre. In her teens, she twice won the W. H. Smith Young Writers' competition—once for short stories and once for poetry—and was presented with the prize by poet Ted Hughes. 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." She had a nervous breakdown and developed anorexia at the age of 15 and underwent Freudian psychoanalysis for four years.
Beckinsale read French and Russian literature at New College, Oxford University and was later described by a contemporary, journalist Victoria Coren, as "whip-clever, slightly nuts and very charming". 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. She spent her third year in Paris as required of all Modern Language students at Oxford, after which she decided to leave 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. I was burning out and I knew I had to make a decision."
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." 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. In 1992, she starred alongside Christopher Eccleston in Rachel’s Dream, a 30-minute Channel 4 short, and in 1993, she appeared in the pilot of the ITV detective series, Anna Lee, starring Imogen Stubbs.
In 1993, Beckinsale landed the role of Hero in Kenneth Branagh's big-screen adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing. It was filmed in Tuscany, Italy during a summer holiday from Oxford University. She attended the film's Cannes Film Festival premiere and later remembered it as an overwhelming experience. "Nobody even told me I could bring a friend!" "I had Doc Martens boots on, and I think I put the flower from the breakfast tray in my hair". Peter Travers of Rolling Stone was won over by her "lovely" performance while Vincent Canby of The New York Times noted that she and Robert Sean Leonard "look right and behave with a certain naive sincerity, although they often seem numb with surprise at hearing the complex locutions they speak." The film earned over $22 million at the box office. She filmed three other movies while at university. In 1994, she appeared as Christian Bale's love interest in Prince of Jutland, a film based on the Danish legend which inspired Shakespeare's Hamlet, and starred in the murder mystery Uncovered. In 1995, while studying in Paris, she filmed the French-language Marie-Louise Ou La Permission.
Shortly after leaving Oxford University in 1995, Beckinsale starred in Cold Comfort Farm as Flora Poste, a newly orphaned 1930s socialite sent to live with distant family members in rural England. The John Schlesinger-directed film was an adaptation of Stella Gibbons's novel and also featured Joanna Lumley, Ian McKellen, Rufus Sewell and Stephen Fry. Beckinsale was initially considered too young, but was cast after she wrote a pleading letter to the director. Emanuel Levy of Variety was reminded of "the strength of a young Glenda Jackson and the charm of a young Julie Christie. Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times classed the actress as "yet another of those effortlessly skilled British beauties who light up the screen." Janet Maslin of The New York Times felt she played the role "with the perfect snippy aplomb". The film grossed over $5 million at the US box office. Also in 1995, she appeared in Haunted, a ghost story in which Derek Elley of Variety felt she "holds the screen, with both physical looks and verbal poise".
1995 also saw Beckinsale's first professional stage appearance as Nina in The Seagull at Theatre Royal, Bath. She became romantically involved with co-star Michael Sheen after meeting during play rehearsals. "He was the young lion of the theatre". "I was all revved up to feel very intimidated. It was my first-ever play and my mother had cut out reviews of him in previous productions. And then he walked in ... It was almost like, 'God, well, I'm finished now. That's it, then.'... He's the most outrageously talented person I've ever met." Irving Wardle of The Independent felt that "the casting, including Michael Sheen's volcanic Kostya and Kate Beckinsale's steadily freezing Nina, is mainly spot-on." In early 1996, she starred in two further plays; Sweetheart at the Royal Court Theatre and Clocks and Whistles at The Bush Theatre.
Beckinsale next starred in an ITV adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma, playing Emma to Mark Strong's Mr Knightley and Samantha Morton's Harriet Smith. "You shouldn't necessarily like Emma," Beckinsale has said of her character. "You do love her, but in the way the family of a teenage girl could be exasperated by her outrageous behavior and still love her." The programme was aired in autumn 1996, just months after Gwyneth Paltrow had starred in a movie adaptation of the same story. Caryn James of The New York Times felt that, while "Ms. Beckinsale's Emma is plainer looking than Ms. Paltrow's", she is "altogether more believable and funnier." Jonathan Brown of The Independent has described Beckinsale's interpretation as "the most enduring modern performance" as Emma.
.
