Kathrin Romany Beckinsale (born 26 July 1973) is an English actress and model. After some minor television roles, her film debut was Much Ado About Nothing (1993) while a student at the University of Oxford. She appeared in British costume dramas such as Prince of Jutland (1994), Cold Comfort Farm (1995), Emma (1996), Shooting Fish (1997) (a contemporary romantic crime comedy) and The Golden Bowl (2000), in addition to various stage and radio productions.
Beckinsale started film work in the United States in the late 1990s. After appearing in small-scale dramas The Last Days of Disco (1998) and Brokedown Palace (1999), she starred in the war drama Pearl Harbor (2001), the romantic comedy Serendipity (2001), and Tiptoes (2003). She followed those with starring roles in The Aviator (2004) and Click (2006). All these films established her as a protagonist in Hollywood.
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), and Total Recall (2012). She continues to make appearances in smaller dramatic projects such as Snow Angels (2007), Nothing but the Truth (2008), and Everybody's Fine (2009). For the two first films she received positive reviews. In 2016, she received critical acclaim for her performance in the period comedy film Love & Friendship, for which she received a nomination for the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress in a Comedy. She returned in action films with Jolt (2021). She also starred in two television projects with The Widow (2019) and Guilty Party (2021).
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, with whom she is not in regular contact. 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. Family friends included Ken Loach and Vanessa Redgrave.
Beckinsale was educated at Godolphin and Latymer School, an independent school for girls in Hammersmith, West London, and was involved with the Orange Tree Youth Theatre. She was twice a winner of the WH Smith Young Writers Award for both fiction and poetry. She has described herself as a "late bloomer": "All of my friends were kissing boys and drinking cider way before me. I found it really depressing that we weren't making camp fires and everyone was doing stuff like that." She had a nervous breakdown and developed anorexia at age fifteen, and underwent Freudian psychoanalysis for four years.
Beckinsale read French and Russian literature at New College, Oxford, and was later described by her contemporary Victoria Coren Mitchell, as "whip-clever, slightly nuts, and very charming". She became friends with Roy Kinnear's daughter Kirsty. She was involved with the Oxford University Dramatic Society, most notably being directed by fellow student Tom Hooper in a production of A View from the Bridge at the Oxford Playhouse. As a Modern Languages student, she was required to spend her third year abroad, and studied in Paris. She then quit university to focus on her burgeoning acting career: "It was getting to the point where I wasn't enjoying either thing enough because both were very high pressure." Beckinsale has stated she would like to complete her studies at Oxford University.
