"Gem dandy"

Tuesday, May 22, 2001

By LOUIS B. HOBSON -- Calgary Sun
HONOLULU -- Somewhere in her heart, Kate Beckinsale always knew she'd be an actress.

She just never dreamed she'd be starring in an epic Hollywood movie like Pearl Harbor (opening Friday), the $139-million US romantic drama set against the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Beckinsale, 27, comes from a British theatre family.

Her mother, Judy Loe, is an actress and casting director. Her father Richard Beckinsale, who died when Kate was five, was a much-beloved TV and stage comedian. Her stepfather, Roy Battersby, is a director, and her half-sister Samantha Beckinsale is an actress.

"When you see your parents excited to go to work as I did, it's a real impetus to do what makes them so fulfilled and happy. My mother never pushed me into acting. She told me I could be anything I wanted except a politician," recalls Beckinsale, whose films include Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing, Cold Comfort Farm, The Last Days of Disco and Brokedown Palace.

"I sort of gently and quietly fell into acting with parts in school plays and bit parts in films, and then bigger roles in TV and stage. The more acting I did, the more I knew it was what I wanted to do."

It was while she was starring in a British touring production of The Seagull that she met her partner of seven years, actor Michael Sheen. The couple welcomed their first child, daughter Lily, on January 31, 1999.

"Lily was a big but welcome surprise. Michael and I were actually thinking about getting married when I discovered I was pregnant. Now we've decided to wait until Lily is old enough to be our flower girl at the wedding."

Beckinsale recalls the most startling thing about her pregnancy was her weight gain. Her willowy figure ballooned by 55 pounds.

"People were convinced I was having twins or that I was due when I was only six months' pregnant.

Weight has been an issue with Beckinsale since she battled anorexia as a youngster. She had difficulty coping with her father's untimely death of a heart attack and her mother's decision to remarry. "I was nine years old when I met my mother's boyfriend. That was difficult but even more so when I learned later he was going to be my stepfather. I had a great imagination and everything I'd ever read about stepfathers as a child was negative. I anticipated the worst."

Early in her career Beckinsale talked about her struggles with anorexia because it was so severe it permanently affected her sight.

She refuses to broach the subject these days, explaining: "I'd prefer not to talk about those days because I don't want to be famous for being a former anorexic."

In Pearl Harbor, Beckinsale plays an American army nurse who falls in love with two pilots and lifelong friends played by Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett. Asked to compare her leading men, Beckinsale focuses on their sense of horseplay. "Ben is the bigger goofball. Joking seems to come natural to him and he loves to tease.

"Ben and I spent a lot of time together early on joking and giggling, so when it came to film our romantic scenes we felt very comfortable. I didn't spend that much time with Josh before we had to film our love scenes. He was a little more nervous, which works for our characters."

The love scenes in Pearl Harbor are rather chaste in terms of today's films, harkening instead to the romantic movies of the '40s and '50s.

Beckinsale recalls that filming her swimming tryst with Hartnett was anything but idyllic.

"On paper, it sounded wonderful and it ends up looking that way in the film. It just said that the lovers frolic in a watery paradise.

"The day we filmed that frolic, they took us way out into the ocean and put us in the water. I'd never swum in the deep ocean so I was a bit nervous and Josh kept asking about the possibility of sharks in the area and that really didn't put me at ease."

Beckinsale hopes she'll get a bit of relaxation in her personal life once her promotional duties for Pearl Harbor are finally over.

"In the seven years that Michael and I have been together we've never actually had a vacation. One or both of us have always been working. He just finished filming a role in The Four Feathers. We'd really like to spend some down time together."

Beckinsale didn't have to fight anywhere near as hard to win the role of the army nurse in Pearl Harbor as she did to play the heroine of Cold Comfort Farm, the 1994 John Schlesinger film that first introduced her to American audiences.

"I auditioned for John and he said he liked my reading very much but that I was too young for the role. I was crushed but I accepted defeat until I read they might have to postpone filming because John still hadn't found an actress.

"I wrote this long, pleading letter explaining why he should let me play the role and with my then boyfriend (actor Edmund Moriarity), I drove to his London home and slipped it through the letter box.

"He gave me another audition and told me that he had made a mistake once with Julie Christie so he would give me the benefit of the doubt."

More Articles