Kate Beckinsale

Kathrin Romany Beckinsale (born 26 July 1973) is an English actress. Beckinsale has gained acclaim for her roles in both action films, romance films, and period dramas. She made her film debut in Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing (1993) while a student at the University of Oxford. She gained prominence taking leading roles in numerous British costume dramas such as Prince of Jutland (1994), Cold Comfort Farm (1995), Emma (1996), Shooting Fish (1997), 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 itv series The Widow (2019) and the Paramount+ series Guilty Party (2021), the later of which she also served as an executive producer. Early life and education 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 has 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.