| BIOGRAPHY
First making an impression on international audiences with her
role as the sweet, virginal Hero in Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado
About Nothing (1993), pale-skinned, fine-boned British actress
Kate Beckinsale has since stepped beyond period pieces to prove
that she is anything but a fragile English rose.
The daughter of a BBC casting director and famed television actor
Richard Beckinsale (known for roles on Porridge and Rising Damp),
Beckinsale was born July 26, 1973. After her father's death from
a heart attack in 1979, the actress was raised by her mother.
By her own account, Beckinsale's childhood and adolescence were
fairly troubled, marked by struggles with anorexia. She decided
to follow in her father's acting footsteps while still a teenager
and in 1991, had her major television debut in Once Against the
Wind, a World War II drama in which she played Judy Davis' daughter.
The same year, Beckinsale enrolled at Oxford, to study French
and Russian Literature, and pursued her education until committing
herself full-time to acting.
In 1993, while still a student at Oxford, Beckinsale was cast
in Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing. Her supporting role was a
memorable one, winning the actress a limited amount of recognition
amongst American audiences, but it was not until 1995, when she
starred in John Schlesinger's adaptation of Stella Gibbons' Cold
Comfort Farm, that her wattage began to increase, at least in
art houses everywhere. The film, which was initially made for
BBC television, proved to be a modest hit, bringing in respectable
box office and glowing reviews. Beckinsale followed the film's
success with another two years later, starring as an altruistic
con artist in the quirky romantic comedy Shooting Fish. The film
was an unqualified hit in its native country, becoming the third-highest
grossing film in England for 1997. The same year, Beckinsale further
increased her visibility with the title role in A&E's Emma.
She next graced American movie screens in Whit Stillman's The
Last Days of Disco (1998). She received good reviews for her portrayal
of a cool and catty WASP college graduate (for which she assumed
an American accent), although the movie itself met with a deeply
mixed reaction. The following year, Beckinsale, in addition to
giving birth to a daughter (fathered by longtime boyfriend Michael
Sheen), starred in her first big-budget Hollywood feature. Playing
opposite Claire Danes in Brokedown Palace, the actress portrayed
an American girl who, while on vacation with best friend Danes
in Thailand, gets caught with heroin and is sentenced to 33 years
in a Thai prison.
That mid-budgeted film, however, was nothing compared to her
next major Hollywood production. After essaying roles in a television
production of Alice Through the Looking Glass (1999) and the Merchant/Ivory
production of Henry James' The Golden Bowl (2000), Beckinsale
was plucked from relative obscurity by director Michael Bay for
his lavish World War II epic, Pearl Harbor (2001). Boasting a
record-setting, nine-digit price tag and one of the most aggressive
marketing campaigns ever waged on the American public, the film
featured the actress as Evelyn, a plucky nurse torn between the
affections of two soldiers. Though a brief foray into Laurel Canyon
found Beckinsale essaying the low-key role of a Harvard graduate
gone astray after a taste of the wild side of life, she once again
shifted into high gear for the big-budget vampire versus werewolf
battle royal Underworld in 2003. Sporting the sort of gothic vinyl
duds that had fanboys crooning, Beckinsale raised arms against
a brutal breed of lycanthropes and few could argue that she looked
good doing it. So good, in fact, that not only a sequel but a
prequel detailing the age old struggle between the bloodsuckers
and the full moon fiends. That same year, Beckinsale and Underworld
director Len Wiseman announced their engagement. A role opposite
a dwarfed (literally} Gary Oldman in Matthew Bright's Tiptoes
was soon to follow, and soon thereafter the starlet was once again
doing battle with the undead (opposite X-Man's Hugh Jackman) in
the action horror adventure Van Helsing.
|
FILMOGRAPHY
• Underworld 2 (2005)
• The Aviator (2004)
• Tiptoes (2004)
• Van Helsing (2004)
• Laurel Canyon (2003)
• Underworld (2003)
• The Golden Bowl (2001)
• Pearl Harbor (2001)
• Serendipity (2001)
• Brokedown Palace (1999)
• The Last Days of Disco (1998)
• Shooting Fish (1998)
• Cold Comfort Farm (1996)
• Jane Austen's Emma (1996)
• Haunted (1995)
• Uncovered (1994)
• Much Ado About Nothing (1993) |
