Kate Beckinsale

Kathrin Romany Beckinsale (born 26 July 1973) is an English actress.

She has gained acclaim for her roles in action films, romance films, and period dramas.

Kathrin Romany Beckinsale was born on 26 July 1973 in the Chiswick district of London, the only child of actors Richard Beckinsale and Judy Loe.

She has a half-sister from her father's earlier marriage, actress Samantha Beckinsale.

Her father was partly of Burmese descent.

Her parents did not marry until 1977, prior to Beckinsale starting nursery school, when she made her first television appearance at age four, in an episode of This Is Your Life dedicated to her father.

When she was five, her father died suddenly of a heart attack aged 31; she was deeply traumatised by the loss and "started expecting bad things to happen."

Her widowed mother moved in with director Roy Battersby when Beckinsale was nine, and she was brought up alongside his four sons and daughter.

She had a close relationship with her stepfather, who was a member of the Workers Revolutionary Party during her youth.

She helped to sell The News Line, a Trotskyist newspaper, as a little girl and has said the household phone was tapped following Battersby's blacklisting by the BBC.

Family friends included Ken Loach and Vanessa Redgrave.

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.

She was twice a winner of the WH Smith Young Writers Award for both fiction and poetry.

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 stuff like that."

She had a nervous breakdown and developed anorexia at age fifteen, and underwent Freudian psychoanalysis for four years.

Beckinsale studied Russian at school and read French and Russian literature at New College, Oxford, and was later described by her contemporary Victoria Coren Mitchell, as "whip-clever, slightly nuts, and very charming".

She became friends with

Roy Kinnear's daughter Kirsty.

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.

As a Modern Languages student, she was required to spend her third year abroad, and studied in Paris.

She then quit university to focus 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."

Beckinsale has stated she would like to complete her studies at Oxford University.

Beckinsale decided at a young age 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 was inspired by the performances of Jeanne Moreau.

She made her television debut in 1991 with a small part in an ITV adaptation of P. D. James' Devices and Desires.

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.

Beckinsale made her film debut in Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing (1993) while a student at the University of Oxford.

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 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 grossed over $22 million at the box office.

She made three other films while at university.

She gained prominence taking leading roles in numerous British costume dramas such as Prince of Jutland (1994), Cold Comfort Farm (1995), Emma (1996), and The Golden Bowl (2000).

She challenged herself taking roles in films such as The Last Days of Disco (1998), Brokedown Palace (1999), Pearl Harbor (2001), Serendipity (2001), Tiptoes (2003), The Aviator (2004) and Click (2006).

Since playing the role of Selene in the Underworld film series (2003–2016), Beckinsale has become known for her work in action films, including Van Helsing (2004), Whiteout (2009), Contraband (2012), Total Recall (2012), and Jolt (2021).

She earned acclaim for her roles in Snow Angels (2007), Nothing but the Truth (2008), Everybody's Fine (2009), Love & Friendship (2016), and The Only Living Boy in New York (2017).

She then took roles in the TV series The Widow (2019) and the streaming TV series Guilty Party (2021), the later of which she also served as an executive producer.