Beckinsale appeared in 2003's Underworld and has since starred in many action movies including Van Helsing (2004), Underworld: Evolution (2006), Whiteout (2009), as well as Contraband, Underworld: Awakening, and Total Recall (all in 2012). She also makes occasional appearances in smaller dramatic projects such as Snow Angels (2007), Winged Creatures (2008), Nothing but the Truth (for which she earned a Critic's Choice Award nomination in 2008), and Everybody's Fine (2009).
Early life
Kathrin Romary Beckinsale was born in London, England. She is the only child of actor Richard Beckinsale and actress Judy Loe. Her father was of one-quarter Burmese descent. She made her first television appearance at the age of four, in an episode of This is Your Life dedicated to her father. When she was five years old, her 31-year-old father died suddenly of a heart attack. Beckinsale was deeply traumatised by the loss and "started expecting bad things to happen". While she has seen her father "more on television than I have in life", "there are certainly enough memories for me not to feel that it's somebody I didn't know." 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 step-father: "I couldn't have knitted a better one ... He wasn't pushy, he let me come to him." She has a paternal half-sister, actress Samantha Beckinsale, but they have not had regular contact. Beckinsale was educated at the fee-paying Godolphin and Latymer School in Hammersmith, West London[9] and was involved with the Orange Tree Youth Theatre. She was a two-time 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 grown-up stuff." "I loathed being a teenager." She had a nervous breakdown and developed anorexia at the age of 15 and underwent Freudian psychoanalysis for four years.
Beckinsale read French and Russian literature at New College, Oxford, and was later described by a contemporary, journalist Victoria Coren, as "whip-clever, slightly nuts, and very charming". 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. She spent her third year in Paris as part of her compulsory year abroad as a Modern Languages student, after which she decided to quit university to concentrate 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. I was burning out and I knew I had to make a decision."
Personal life
Beckinsale had an eight-year relationship with actor Michael Sheen from 1995 until 2003. They met when cast in a touring production of The Seagull in early 1995 and moved in together shortly afterwards. She has said it was "love at first sight"[174] and that he saved her from "a hospital for the criminally insane". In 1997, they appeared in a radio production of Romeo and Juliet. Their daughter, Lily Mo Sheen, was born in London in 1999. The actress has said she was "embarrassed" that Sheen never proposed but felt as though she were married: "If you keep a library book out long enough, you feel it's yours."
Their relationship ended in early 2003, after the filming of Underworld. Beckinsale had persuaded director Len Wiseman to cast Sheen in the film, but, while on set, she and Wiseman (who was married) began a relationship. All parties, aside from Wiseman's first wife, have maintained that there was no infidelity. Wiseman married Beckinsale on May 9, 2004 in Bel-Air, California. They live in Los Angeles. Beckinsale and Wiseman both remain friends with Sheen.
Charity work
The British Heart Foundation has been Beckinsale's charity of choice "ever since I was six years old". She has also donated film memorabilia to the Epidermolysis Bullosa Medical Research Foundation,[188] MediCinema Habitat For Humanity and the Entertainment Industry Foundation. In 2008 she hosted the 4th Annual Pink Party to raise funds for the Women’s Cancer Research Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and organised a screening of All About Eve for FilmAid International. In 2012 Beckinsale joined Nestlé's Share the Joy of Reading Programme to raise awareness about the importance of children's literacy.
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