Kate Beckinsale

Kathryn Bailey Beckinsale was born in London England on June 26, 1973 she is a British film actress.

As a child, Beckinsale won two W.H. Smith Young Writers’ Awards and later studied French and Russian Literature at New College Oxford and even later, in Paris. She left University to pursue an acting career that started with a small part in Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing, which starred Branagh, Emma Thompson, Keanu Reeves, Michael Keaton and Denzel Washington in 1993.

Her next role was in a TV version of Jane Austen’s Emma in 1996 and on stage in Cold Comfort Farm opposite Rufus Sewell, Eileen Atkins, Joanna Lumley and Stephen Fry.

Beckinsale moved to the United States in 1998 and her first American film was Brokedown Palace starring Bill Pullman and Claire Danes. It wasn’t much of a success; but her next film, Pearl Harbor was. The Jerry Bruckheimer pot boiler, starring Ben Affleck, Alec Baldwin, Jon Voight, Cuba Gooding Jr., Josh Hartnett and Jennifer Garner made a fortune for Touchstone Pictures in the summer of 2001.

Her next three films didn’t do well at the box office. Serendipity in 2001 (with John Cusack), Underworld in 2003 where vampires battle werewolves and 2004’s Van Helsing in which she played opposite Hugh Jackman. In 2006, she reprised her role as a vampire in Underworld: Evolution, directed by her husband Len Wiseman. She also starred opposite Adam Sandler in the comedy Click, which fared miserably at the box office.

Beckinsale is very good friends with Victoria Beckham and has a number of upcoming projects that will be released in 2008/2009.