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Kate Beckinsale finally plays an action gal, a vampire
in the hit film Underworld.
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Only 10 minutes into her interview, British actress Kate Beckinsale unloads a juicy quote, tailor-made for gossip columns. By the playful look on her face, I think she was trying to get a reaction. "If you ask me something, I'll tell you," she says. "I haven't done anything naughty. I know people lie, but I've never been drunk even. I've never taken drugs. I've never had a one-night stand. I've never done anything I've been ashamed of at all. If someone asks, 'Do you wear underwear?' I'll say, 'No, I don't.' "
Asked if she was revealing something, Beckinsale laughs and says: "You have to ask me."
So I take the bait. "Do you wear underwear?"
Beckinsale's response is quick and matter-of-fact: "No."
The 2003 Toronto International Film Festival is underway, and Beckinsale is in town to promote Underworld, a horror action movie that's part of the festival's popular Midnight Madness series. It's late Sunday morning, the festival is already in its fourth day, but Beckinsale has yet to spend much time outside her hotel. She's busy promoting the film with constant interviews, which means she's yet to see herself clad in a long, black coat, brandishing two pistols on the humongous Underworld billboards scattered throughout Toronto.
In director Len Wiseman's Underworld, Beckinsale plays Selene, a vampire warrior who saves a young doctor (Scott Speedman) from her sworn enemy, the werewolves. She dons a black latex suit for the action role, her Charlie's Angels moment, guaranteed to make her a favorite pin-up with comic book fans worldwide. The most popular women's roles are frequently in action movies and Beckinsale wants her share of the fun. Besides, she enjoys movies like Underworld.
"I'm a fan of action movies, yeah," she says. "I love the Alien series. I love Die Hard. I love Terminator. I'll go see any action movie. I went and saw Collateral Damage on Valentine's Day. My boyfriend wanted to see Amélie, but I won out. On Valentine's Day all the women get the first choice you see, so the theater was empty."
Beckinsale is best known for quaint period dramas like the TV miniseries adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma, the Shakespeare film Much Ado About Nothing and the Merchant Ivory film, The Golden Bowl.
She revealed her on-screen versatility with roles as a 1980s club kid in The Last Days of Disco and a studious graduate student who loosens up after meeting her hippy mother-in-law in the recent drama, Laurel Canyon. She starred as the female love interest in the Hollywood blockbuster Pearl Harbor, but Underworld qualifies as her most unusual role to date.
Beckinsale plays the action gal in Underworld, something she'd love to be in real life. But she confesses that the truth is the exact opposite.
"I'm a weed in my regular daily life," Beckinsale says, laughing. "A wet weed, you know, a wuss, a pussy, the guy who can't catch a ball.
"But you get sent a script for a great action movie and want to play the boys part. Like in Die Hard, I don't want to be sitting on an airplane making phone calls and stuff. I want to be blowing up the elevator shaft. It doesn't happen very often, and in American films when it does happen it's often camp and winky-winky. I wanted to do La Femme Nikita."
Promoting a film is arduous work, but Beckinsale appears to be enjoying herself this morning. She's casual, funny, basking in the fact that Underworld is the type of fast-paced entertainment not to be taken seriously.
Beckinsale looks like the classic English Rose, and she's dressed immaculately in a long pinstripe skirt and a sheer black sweater. Her brown hair is pulled back into a loose bun. She's the epitome of celebrity polish, but her chatter is loose and funny.
She jokes about her personal life, how she began shooting Underworld with her longtime boyfriend Michael Sheen in the cast. They separated and now she's with the film's director, Wiseman.
On a TV talk show, Beckinsale confessed to asking the studio marketing staff to enlarge her breasts for the Underworld poster, only to be shocked by how large they made them. For her, everything about the film is fun and games.
Los Angeles is Beckinsale's new home. She says she was tired of making the long flights for every meeting and audition. She's close to the action now, and her busy work schedule proves it. Beckinsale is currently playing Ava Gardner in director Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, a film about Howard Hughes. Her next film is Van Helsing, where she plays a gypsy princess who aids the titular character, played by Hugh Jackman, in his fight against famous monsters. It was a dream come true for Beckinsale, two back-to-back action movies. Then she discovered why so many actors take breaks between action movies.
"I'm black-and-blue. I heard after I said yes to the films that Harrison Ford explained he would never do two action movies in a row. It's really hard going.
"I was an idiot. I thought you had to do every single thing in an action movie. If my character did 40 back flips, I thought you had to go out and learn it. You had to get good at something in a short time. I never held a gun, and I had to look like I've been using one for hundreds of years. I learned there are stunt doubles. I was nervous to do this. I didn't know if I could pull it off. I'm proud, but I'm still a weed." ©
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