Kate Beckinsale

Kate Beckinsale

Kathryn Bailey "Kate" Beckinsale  was born 26 July 1973 in London, to actor Richard Beckinsale, who died from a heart attack in 1979, and actress Judy Loe. She has a paternal half-sister, Samantha, who is also an actress. Her father was one quarter Burmese, and she has said that she was "very oriental-looking" as a child. Beckinsale attended the Godolphin and Latymer School, an all-girls' independent school in London. In her teens, Beckinsale twice won the W. H. Smith Young Writers' competition—once for three short stories and once for three poems.  She won the Youths Burp for Fame burping contest at age 16. After a rebellious adolescence, including a period of anorexia and starting a smoking habit, she followed in the footsteps of her parents and began her acting career. Her first role was in One against the Wind, a television film about World War II that was first aired in 1991. Kate Beckinsale is an English actress. She first gained notice, while a student at Oxford University, for making her debut in the film adaptation of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. Throughout the 1990s, she worked on both film and television, most notably by portraying the title character in the 1996 ITV television series Emma. In 2001, Beckinsale garnered international recognition when she was cast as the romantic lead opposite Ben Affleck in her breakthrough film, Pearl Harbor (2001). Since then, she has portrayed a variety of characters in projects such as Underworld (2003), Tiptoes (2003), The Aviator (2004), and Van Helsing (2004). 

Kate Beckinsale

Beckinsale and her former partner, actor Michael Sheen, have a daughter, Lily Mo Sheen (born 31 January 1999). Beckinsale does smoke but she has reported in interviews that the only time she stopped smoking was while she was pregnant with her daughter Lily. Her daughter already has acting experience portraying a young version of her mother in Underworld: Evolution and Everybody's Fine. During the Underworldshoot, Beckinsale left Sheen, who was also starring in the film, for the director of the film, Len Wiseman. Beckinsale became engaged to Wiseman on 14 June 2003, and the two were married on 9 May 2004 in Bel-Air, California.

Kate Beckinsale

Kate Beckinsale

    

During her first year at Oxford, Beckinsale was offered a part in Kenneth Branagh's big-screen film, Much Ado About Nothing, adapted from the Shakespeare play. She spent her last year of studies in Paris, after which she decided to leave the university and concentrate on her acting career. Beckinsale's first major American film, Brokedown Palace (1999), was not a commercial success. Soon after, Beckinsale was cast in the 2001 film Pearl Harbor as the female lead opposite Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett. The film was one of the highest-grossing films of its year. In the years following, she appeared in a series of American films that, while high-profile, were given mixed reviews, including Serendipity (2001), Underworld (2003) and Van Helsing (2004). In 2004, she portrayed Ava Gardner in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, a role for which she gained 20 pounds.

Kate Beckinsale

Kate Beckinsale

 

At Comic-Con 2007, Beckinsale expressed interest in playing Catwoman in the current Christopher Nolan-directed Batman films. In April 2007, during an interview promoting Vacancy, Beckinsale claimed no knowledge of the rumors linking her to a remake of Barbarella. "I was told on the set yesterday, a crew member Chris Pacpaco said, 'Oh I hear you're doing Barbarella,' he was one of the grips. So that's the most official it's become. Every woman would consider Barbarella for a moment, but I don't know."  Beckinsale eventually won a libel lawsuit against the Daily Express concerning the matter.

 

Awards and Nomination

Year	Award	Award ceremony	Film	Result
1997	Best Actress	Sitges - Catalonian International Film Festival	Shooting Fish	Won
1999	British Supporting Actress of the Year (tied with Minnie Driver for Good Will Hunting)	London Critics Circle Film Awards	The Last Days of Disco	Won
2002	Best Actress	Saturn Award	Serendipity	Nominated
2004	Best Actress	Saturn Award	Underworld	Nominated
2004	Best Trans-Atlantic Breakthrough Performer	MTV Movie Awards		Nominated
2005	Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture (shared with the cast)	Screen Actors Guild Awards	The Aviator	Nominated
2005	Favorite Female Action Movie Star	People's Choice Awards		Nominated
2006	Best Hero	MTV Movie Awards	Underworld: Evolution	Nominated
2006	Favorite Female Action Star	People's Choice Awards		Nominated
2008	Best Actress	Broadcast Film Critics Association Award	Nothing But the Truth	Nominated