Kate Beckinsale: A Brit with Wit

Although British beauty Kate Beckinsale has appeared in Brokedown Palace (with Claire Danes), Much Ado About Nothing (Kenneth Branagh's interpretation of the Shakespeare classic, and The Golden Bowl, you probably best remember her from the recent Pearl Harbor as a pretty American nurse caught between two lovers. Raised in a show-biz family (her dad was an actor, mom a casting director), Kate caught the acting bug early and is just now coming into her own. At a recent press event in Los Angeles, the elegant actress looked prim but very feminine in a little chiffon dress with a high collar. She told us, in her lovely English accent, about her role in the new romantic comedy Serendipity, being a mom to daughter Lily, the role destiny had in her relationship (with actor Michael Sheen), how recent stardom has effected her life and two wild, back-to-back weeks of "madly kissing everybody."

Teenhollywood: John Cusack, your co-star in Serendipity, said he first met you when you were pregnant?

Kate: I was so vastly pregnant. I gained an awful lot of weight. I think I gained sixty pounds. It finally came off but not until I had tortured my poor boyfriend. "I'm going to be like this forever. Why is it bumpy from my ankle to my neck?" Then you do a Michael Bay movie and he yells at you and you get so nervous that you can't eat so that helped.

Teenhollywood: Was (director) Michael Bay that scary?

Kate: He's intense and he's one of those people who, if he thinks your haircut is bad or your butt looks big in something, he'll come right out and say it. He was obsessed with me being pale. But, I was pale at the audition. I was pale at the screen test. I just am. I lack a certain pigment. It was different on this film (Serendipity) with Peter (Chelsom) who was "Oh, you're so beautiful, you're so great." "Oh, you think so?" The two films kind of crossed over. They saved up all the kissing scenes in Pearl Harbor until the last week and all of the kissing scenes with John (Cusack) were in the first week (of Serendipity) so there was this two week period where I was going between New York and L.A. madly kissing everybody and forgetting people's names.

Teenhollywood: Were you happy to get rid of that thick 1940s make-up?

Kate: Yeah, I was. I'm not used to wearing a lot of make-up. I always felt a little like a drag queen. I walk in (as me) and then come out in this whole drag thing.

Teenhollywood: Are you finished doing costume dramas?

Kate: I think, as an English woman, you can never say that you're through with costume dramas. I'd never particularly intended to do costume dramas. It's just that some of the things that I've liked happened to be corset pictures.

Teenhollywood: How did you and John Cusack meet?

Kate: He was doing a movie and it was with a director who had known my father and we were all going to meet to talk about this movie and we got on really well. It was really sparky and fun and I was thinking I'd like to work with him and he felt the same. Then I went into being a "mummy" and hiding for a long time and then this film came up and he met me for dinner again and I think he was thinking, "Jesus, where's that voluptuous blonde I met? Who's this skinny, dark-haired person?" I had dyed my hair blonde when I was pregnant.

Teenhollywood: Do you believe that destiny is responsible for relationships (like the characters do in this film)?

Kate: I kind of do, yeah. When my boyfriend (Michael Sheen) and I got together it was clear instantly that we were both done (looking). We'd lived on the same street in Paris at the same time and we'd been in the same elevator with the same flasher guy. We'd almost met so many times but we were both so kooky when we met that I think if we'd met any earlier, we would have killed each other. As it is, we kind of ironed each others creases out a little bit.

Teenhollywood: Would you ever leave an important relationship to fate?

Kate: I was the girl who would find out where he was going to walk past and then sit there for two weeks. "Oh, hi! I never see you, wow!" I did that a lot. Really elaborate ones.

Teenhollywood: How did you meet your boyfriend?

Kate: We met doing a play, The Seagull. It was an awful production but a good play.

Teenhollywood: Your character in Serendipity is involved with a really strange boyfriend for a while (played by John Corbett). What did she see in him?

Kate: I think he doesn't realize he's funny. We've all got one of those relationships where we think, "Jeepers, what was I doing?" And, it's usually the one you almost marry. Then you spend the next few years being really mean about them to your present partner like they fooled you into it or something. He was a nice, odd guy and she thought he was kind of arty.

Teenhollywood: What advice would you give to a teen who wants to act?

Kate: I never really thought about it because my parents are both actors and all their friends are actors and you say "I want to act" when you're five and everyone goes "oh, no" and is really mean about it. If you're meant to do it you will somehow be doing it. I'd love to write but I think I'd really miss it if I were just writing. If you really want to, you will and you don't necessarily know what form it will take. For example, my boyfriend's father never became an actor or tried but late in life everybody started telling him that he looked like Jack Nicholson and he's become the most famous, award-winning Jack Nicholson look-alike and goes around the world as Jack Nicholson. So that's one way to do it. He gets mobbed.

Teenhollywood: What do you like to write?

Kate: Originally, that's what I was going to do. I started out with poetry and short stories and then went to Oxford and was so engulfed with acting there that that fell by the wayside. Then, I got pregnant and I thought, "Great. Once I've had the baby and I'm home, I'll write a novel." I didn't realize that it would take me until four in the afternoon just to get dressed. Now that she's going to go to school, I'll probably start threatening to do it again.

Teenhollywood: Has Pearl Harbor launched you into a whole other level?

Kate: Yeah. There are more scripts. Some are good and some are stinkers. You get phone calls from more frightening people and you get to meet people that you think are fantastic and you have to sit there and pretend that it's normal and then go to the bathroom and call your friends "You'll never guess who I'm talking to." But with Pearl Harbor, every time the movie opened in a country, I went to another country to (promote) it so it took a while for it to catch up (with me).

We just went to Hawaii on vacation and we said "People aren't really that friendly here. Why doesn't anybody say hello to us ever?" Then you realize that they've seen your movie and they don't want to bother you and then suddenly they do bother you and then everybody bothers you. It's a whole new thing for me and I've been lucky because generally, I do have my baby with me and people have been really great, not too intrusive. They just want to have a photo taken. But she's two and a half now and she'll say "Go away!" in this English accent. "Leave us alone."

Teenhollywood: Does your daughter Lily like being on sets?

Kate: She loves it. The make-up people are ready to make her cat whiskers and she gets to sit on the camera and everybody applauds.

Teenhollywood: Is an American film career important to you?

Kate: Well, this is where a lot of films get made so if you're going to be making movies for a living, it's odd to bypass coming here. I was very nervous to come here when I was younger because I was kooky and less grounded by my family than I am now. I was aware that you can really get caught up in something that's so much bigger than you are and go nuts so I didn't come here for a long time. Everything changed in my life. I didn't really expect to have a baby. That was a surprise and I read a script that I liked and it turned into Pearl Harbor and that was a surprise. It all happened in the same year so the dust is settling.

Teenhollywood: Anything crazy happen on the Serendipity set?

Kate: The first week was a disaster because we were fitted with our costumes for Christmas and I had a big mohair cardigan and a big overcoat, stockings and big boots. But it was New York in August so we were all sweating and passing out and then it rained like crazy and we couldn't film. It finally stopped raining and there was this West Nile mosquito virus scare in Central Park and they had to clear with spraying. I started to think that it's serendipity. The Gods don't want us to make this film.

Teenhollywood: How is working with comedienne Molly Shannon?

Kate: She's hilarious but she's got this innocent enthusiasm. She's not an actor that sits there and goes "Oh, the food was so much better on my last movie." She's just "Oh, that's great!" You can get her a cigar box and she's like you could have bought her the Hope diamond. She was nice to my child and that's the first way to butter me up.

Teenhollywood: Is it easy or hard to do an American accent?

Kate: I love accents. I've always been fascinated by the way people talk and if have a funny thing their mouth does or a lisp. I enjoy doing that but this was the first time in five or six movies that I got to use my English accent. It was an odd sensation, leaving the American accent behind. My agent says a lot of people ask, "Can she do an English accent?" She's like, "Uh, yes. She's English." I never get fooled into thinking that an accent is an excuse for a performance. Just part of it. I like meeting the voice coach, listening to the region.

Teenhollywood: What's next?

Kate: Not sure yet. It's the first time I feel like I want to put my nose out the door, with having the baby and the press, it's just now calmed down a bit and I'm starting to read stuff again. I like not knowing. I like having a pile of scripts and looking through and deciding what's going to grab me. After having a baby it's kind of a rest to go to work because you are doing only one thing. I've had a long time of doing press and publicity and it wasn't really about being an actor. It feels a bit peculiar. I'm ready to go back to work.

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Interviewer and writer Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.