Kathryn Bailey "Kate" Beckinsale (born July 26, 1973) is an English actress, known for her roles in the films Pearl Harbor (2001), Van Helsing (2004), and Underworld (2003).
Beckinsale was born in London to Judy Loe, a stage and television actress, and Richard Beckinsale, a television actor who died in 1979 at the age of 31. She has a paternal half-sister, Samantha, who is also an actress. Beckinsale's paternal great-grandfather was Burmese, and Beckinsale has said that she was "very oriental-looking" as a child.
Beckinsale attended the private Godolphin and Latymer School, and in her teens twice won the W. H. Smith Young Writers' competition — once for three short stories and once for three poems. 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. Having gained...
Created by dipity on Jan 24, 2008
Last updated: 03/12/10 at 03:22 AM
Vacancy- a 2007 horror/thriller which stars Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale was distributed by Screen Gems and was released to the public on April 20, 2007. Production was scheduled to commence in August 2006. Nimród Antal had signed on to direct the movie.
Early on, Sarah Jessica Parker was going to be in the film. A September 2006 article in The Hollywood Reporter announced that Kate Beckinsale had signed on to replace Parker.David (Luke Wilson) and Amy Fox's (Kate Beckinsale) car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and the bickering couple decide to spend the night in a motel with a creepy manager (Frank Whaley). They discover that the low-budget slasher movies they're watching on TV were all filmed in the exact room they're staying in and are actually snuff films that they are about to become a part of. They crawl through an underground tunnel to escape from their room, and that brings them to the hotel lobby. David and Amy struggle to get out alive while cameras film their every...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0452702
The untitled Underworld prequel is the upcoming film that is the third installment in the Underworld film franchise.In a June 2006 interview, Underworld: Evolution director Len Wiseman said, "The third film is going to be a prequel. It will be the origin story and we find out things we didn't know about Lucian; he'll have a much bigger part in it. It will be about the creation [of the races] and what started the war. It will be a period piece."In September 2003, shortly after the release of the 2003 Underworld, production companies Screen Gems and Lakeshore planned to release a prequel as the third film following Underworld's sequel, which was the 2006 Underworld: Evolution. Kate Beckinsale, who portrayed Selene in Underworld, expressed interest in reprising her role for the sequel and the prequel.Michael Sheen, who played Lucian, has also expressed interest in reprising the role. [1]In December 2005, Underworld: Evolution director Len Wiseman explained that the Underworld franchise...
Click is a 2006 comedy/drama /fantasy film directed by Frank Coraci and written by Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe. Click tells the story of Michael Newman (Adam Sandler), an overworked architect so wrapped up in his job because of his boss (David Hasselhoff) that his family is forced to take the backseat. He gets a "universal remote" from an eccentric engineer named Morty (Christopher Walken), and finds he can literally control the universe around him. It began filming in late-2005 and was finished by early-2006. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Makeup.
Tagline:What If You Had A Universal Remote... That Controlled Your Universe?Michael Newman (Adam Sandler) is a loving family man who just wants to be promoted to his boss John Ammer's partner in an architectural firm so that he can spend more time with his wife Donna (Kate Beckinsale), kids Ben and Samantha and his dog Sundance (Who had developed a habit of continueing mating with a stuffed duck). While he is at a...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0389860
Underworld: Evolution It is the second film in the Underworld series, following Underworld in 2003. Evolution continues the conflict between vampires and Lycans, also highlighting the beginnings of the feud.
Underworld Evolution is an immediate follow-up to Underworld (2003). Therefore, the events of Evolution begin during the same night of the first film's finale, and the next few days after.
The story opens in a flashback sequence to the year 1202 AD. An army of medieval warriors arrives at a ravaged village, led by the three vampire elders: Marcus Corvinus, Viktor, and Amelia, followed by an army of the first Death Dealers. Viktor orders his troops to quickly burn the corpses of the slain villagers, but before the task is completed, the bodies awake and transform into werewolves. A bloody battle erupts, and Viktor orders Marcus to retreat. Viktor and Amelia take the rest of their troops into the woods, where they capture Marcus's brother William Corvinus, the first and most...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401855
The Aviator is an Academy Award-winning 2004 biographical drama film, directed by Martin Scorsese, and based largely on the book "Hughes" by Richard Hack. It tells the story of the eccentric aviation pioneer Howard Hughes, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, following his life from the late 1920s through the 1940s, a time when Hughes was directing and producing Hollywood movies as well as test-piloting his own groundbreaking new aircraft. The film also illustrates Hughes's descent into obsessive compulsiveness and reclusiveness.
Hughes, orphaned at age 17, was the son of a Texan inventor, who left him most of his multi-million dollar tool company upon his death. At the time, he was a college student at Rice University. From there, he moved to Los Angeles to become a movie producer, helping fledgling actors launch their careers, such as Jean Harlow, whom he cast in Hell's Angels. He also produced Scarface. Later in his career, he branched out into other industries, such as electronics and...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338751
Van Helsing is a 2004 American action/horror film about vampire hunter Gabriel Van Helsing, written and directed by Stephen Sommers. The film stars Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale.
Based on a version of the character of Abraham Van Helsing from Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, the film also incorporates characters from other works such as the film The Wolf Man into the narrative, and draws particularly on literary classics of the gothic horror canon such as Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein.
The film opens in Transylvania, 1887, where an angry mob is preparing to storm Dr. Frankenstein's (Samuel West) castle, as his infamous reanimation experiment is about to complete. Count Dracula (Richard Roxburgh) has commissioned the experiment, because he wants to use the monster (Shuler Hensley) for an evil scheme. When Dr. Frankenstein refuses to abide, Dracula kills him, and the mob breaks into the castle. Frankenstein's monster takes his "father's" body and runs off to a nearby windmill. The...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338526
Underworld is a 2003 action-horror film about the secret history of vampire and werewolves, where the latter are referred to as "Lycan" as an abbreviated form of lycanthrope. It is the first film in the Underworld series. The main plot revolves around Selene (Kate Beckinsale), a vampire "Death Dealer", or one who hunts Lycans, a job she is extremely good at due to the fact that she is fueled with hatred for the whole species, whom she believes to have killed her entire family. She finds herself attracted to a medical intern, Michael Corvin (Scott Speedman), after saving him from the Lycan master Lucian (who bit Michael and infected him with the Lycan virus), and must decide whether to do her "duty" and kill him or to risk her life to save him. This movie has many parallels as a dark Romeo and Juliet tale.In the Underworld myths, Vampires and Lycans are not mystical creatures, but rather the product of a virus. Sixteen centuries ago, a man named Alexander Corvinus was the only...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0320691
Tiptoes is a 2003 film starring Kate Beckinsale, Matthew McConaughey, and Gary Oldman.The story of the love of one woman for twin brothers and for the fetus she carries in utero. Carol (Kate Beckinsale) falls in love with Steven (Matthew McConaughey) without knowing much about him other than he's the perfect man. But when Carol finds herself pregnant it forces Steven to expose his darkest secret, his family. Steven happens to be the only average sized person in a family of dwarfs (see Dwarfism) including his twin brother Rolfe (Gary Oldman). Carol and Steven are then forced to come to terms with the fact that the fetus she carries may be born a dwarf which is more difficult for Steven to accept. As Carol decides to carry the child her and Steven grow farther apart and she begins to rely on Rolfe to teach her about the life of people with dwarfism....,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0316768
Laurel Canyon is a 2002 American drama movie, written and directed by Lisa Cholodenko.
Sam (Christian Bale) and his fiancée, Alex (Kate Beckinsale) are a newly engaged couple who move to Los Angeles to further their working careers. Sam is a recently graduated psychiatrist, starting his residency, while Alex is finishing her M.D.-Ph.D.dissertation on genomics. The relatively strait-laced, upwardly mobile couple plan to stay at the vacant home of Sam's mother, Jane (Frances McDormand), a free-spirited record producer in the Laurel Canyon section of the City of Los Angeles.
In a change of plans, however, Jane is still around, recording an album with her boyfriend Ian (Alessandro Nivola) and his band. Jane and Ian are in the midst of a fiery romance, and both producer and band seem more interested in partying than finishing the record.
Jane's presence is a source of consternation for Sam, as he and his mother have a somewhat strained relationship owing to their very different mindsets....
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0298408
Serendipity is a 2001 romantic movie, starring Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack. It is written by Marc Klein and directed by Peter Chelsom.On a bustling shopping day in winter, Jonathan meets Sara when both try to buy the same pair of gloves at Bloomingdale's department store. Two strangers amid the masses in New York City, their paths collide in the mad holiday rush as they feel a mutual attraction. Despite the fact that each is involved in another relationship, Jonathan and Sara spend the evening travelling Manhattan. But when the night reaches its inevitable end, the two are forced into determining some kind of next step. When the smitten Jonathan suggests an exchange of phone numbers, Sara balks and proposes an idea that will allow fate to take control of their future. If they are meant to be together, she tells him, they will find their way back into one another's life.The majority of the film takes place seven years later, and consists largely of repeated "almost coincidences"...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0240890
Pearl Harbor is an Oscar-winning war film released in the summer of 2001 by Touchstone Pictures. It stars Ben Affleck, Alec Baldwin, Jon Voight, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, Cuba Gooding Jr., Dan Aykroyd, Jaime King, and Jennifer Garner. It was a dramatic re-imagining of the attack on Pearl Harbor, produced by the team of Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay, who had previously directed summer mega-blockbusters such as Armageddon and The Rock. The final section of the movie relates the Doolittle Raid, the first American attack on the Japanese home islands in World War II.
The movie begins on a Tennessee farm as two kids, Rafe McCawley (Jesse James) and Danny Walker (Reiley McClendon), play in a pretend fighter plane they made, pretending to be shooting down German planes. As they are playing, Danny's dad (William Fichtner) is out dusting the fields in his old cropduster. When he lands and goes into his tractor, the two boys sneak into his plane and keep the pretend fight going. They...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0213149
Brokedown Palace is an American film directed by Jonathan Kaplan, and starring Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsale (see 1999 in film).
Lifelong best friends Alice Marano (Danes) and Darlene Davis (Beckinsale), change their pre-college summer vacation destination from Hawaii to Thailand at Alice's insistence. While there, they meet a captivating Australian man, Nick Parks (Daniel Lapaine), who befriends them and invites them along with him to Hong Kong. However, the girls are found with large amounts of heroin at Bangkok International Airport while preparing to board their plane, and are quickly taken into custody for drug smuggling. Darlene is tricked into signing a confession in a foreign language she does not understand.
The story takes an abrupt turn as the girls find themselves sentenced to lengthy terms (33 years, plus fifteen for an escape attempt) in a grim Thai women's prison, called the Brokedown Palace by its inmates. During the first several months of their incarceration, the...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120620
The Last Days of Disco is a 1998 movie written and directed by Whit Stillman.Tagline: History is made at nightThe Last Days of Disco is the third film in Whit Stillman's trilogy that began with Metropolitan and continued with his acclaimed Barcelona.In 2000 Whit Stillman published a part-novelization of the film: The Last Days of Disco, With Cocktails at Petrossian Afterwards.As of May 2006, the DVD of The Last Days of Disco has been out of print for a couple of years (since 2000 or 2001), and is selling for $100 to $270 online.The movie loosely depicts the "last days" at a disco palace, where drugs, sex and weirdness ran rampant. The story centers around a group of friends who frequent the disco. All the characters are searching for something to make their lives more fulfilling. Some are searching for everlasting love and some are just wanting something different. As the disco is closed, they all wonder can disco ever really be dead?The Last Days of Disco was loosely based on...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120728
Shooting Fish is a 1997 British film directed and co-written by Stefan Schwartz and co-starred Dan Futterman and Stuart Townsend as two con-men with Kate Beckinsale as their unwilling assistant. It was produced by Winchester Films and partly funded by National Lottery money administered through the UK Arts Council. Shooting Fish aimed to transfer well to international markets that were keen on British films following the success of Four Weddings and a Funeral, which it draws much influence from.Dylan (Futterman) and Jez (Townsend) are two orphans who meet in their twenties and vow to achieve their shared childhood dream of living in a stately home. In pursuit of this dream they spend their days living in a disused gas works, spending as little money as possible and conning the upper classes out of their riches. But during one of their biggest cons, their lives are touched by Georgie (Beckinsale), who needs money to save the Down syndrome foundation that her brother attends. When a con...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120122
Kate Beckinsale was born in London, Greater London
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