Kate Beckinsale looks smoking hot on the latest cover of Men’s Style Australia. Inside the magazine, the 38-year-old actress dishes on her career and personal life, about wearing a latex suit in ‘Underworld’ and keeping things interesting in her married life. On opening a new chapter of her career, Kate says that, “I’m hopeful. I felt a certain amount of lethargy when it came to my career as soon as I started getting used to the idea of life in California and being at home when my daughter arrived back from school. For the last few years, I was a totally devoted mother who wanted to be there for her and I didn’t find any projects that I couldn’t live without.”
The actress also reveals she feels content to be working again. “I’m very happy to be in a position where I can do some good work again. Sometimes it can be discouraging when you feel you’re not finding roles in the really interesting films that every actress dies for. Once you’ve enjoyed some success earlier in your career, you think the good roles will just magically drop in your lap but the competition is actually very fierce. I find it hard to go out there and push as much as I should,” she says.
Speaking about the latex suit she wears in the fourth ‘Underworld’ and accepting to star in the film, the actress admits that, “I wouldn’t call it prancing about! (Laughs) Naughty boy! We never planned on doing a fourth ‘Underworld’ because usually that extends a franchise too far and you worry about doing crap for a pay cheque. But I loved the script and the way they found different layers to Selene and created something special that fans of the previous films would really go for. Otherwise I would never have done this one if I had believed we were just treading on old ground.”
On the possibility of making a fifth ‘Underworld’, Kate confesses that, “I’m not sure how long I can keep telling myself to put on the latex suit as I approach 40. Also, my daughter is old enough to eye my films with a certain amount of suspicion and I want to be able to justify to her why I’m doing each film… although maybe the ‘Underworld’ films make her mum cooler in the eyes of her friends.”
Asked whether ‘Total Recall’ represents the high-point of her career as a sci-fi star, the actress told Men’s Style that, “It’s hard to say. I love doing thrillers and I grew up going with my four brothers to all the early ‘Die Hard’ films. And then I wound up being married to the man who spent two years of his life making the last ‘Die Hard’ movie [‘Die Hard 4.0] which I wasn’t that thrilled about because the film consumed so much of his and our life together. But I’ve made my peace with ‘Die Hard’ now and I’m glad we worked on ‘Total Recall’ together. It meant that I could spend more time with him in Toronto where we shot the film.”
Kate lives in L.A. with her husband, director Len Wiseman and 13-year-old daughter Lily. In the interview with the magazine, the actress also reveals how she manages to keep things interesting when it comes to her marriage. “We try to keep things interesting! We always seem to have good fun being together. I tend to be neurotic and self-doubting at times, whereas Len is the sanest and least neurotic person I’ve ever known and sometimes I have fun just in testing that implacable sensibility. In the middle of the night I will sometimes stick these make-up patches on him and he’ll wake up with this giant bloody scar on his forehead. I love playing those kinds of pranks on him and he will just smile and go on with whatever he’s doing. It’s maddening,” she says.
On worrying about her body as she gets older, the actress admits that, “No. I find it easier to deal with how I look and what my body looks like today as opposed to when I was 18. By the time I hit 30 I began to accept the way I looked and felt comfortable with my body. I’ve learnt that being obsessed or overly involved with your appearance makes you a deeply dull person. I have to admit that I’m a regular practitioner of yoga even though I always loathed the idea. And I get to lie down for 10 minutes at the end of each session. I don’t think I’d appreciate it as much otherwise. I’m not doing it because it gives me a much better bottom!”
Photos courtesy of Men’s Style
