Kate Beckinsale

Her first film credit came at 19, cast by Kenneth Branagh in Much Ado About Nothing while still at Oxford. British period dramas followed (Cold Comfort Farm, Emma), the kind of roles that made casting directors think fragile. She initially turned down Selene in Underworld, but director Len Wiseman sent concept drawings based on her likeness and talked her into it. The franchise got 31% on Rotten Tomatoes and grossed $95 million on a $21 million budget. Four sequels followed. She reportedly couldn't throw a punch or fire a gun before training for the role. Afterward, that was the only version of her Hollywood wanted.

The action franchise phase is winding down, but she's been louder than ever. Late 2024, she went public with detailed accounts of on-set abuse: a forced photoshoot while still bleeding from a miscarriage, physical harm by a co-star, Weinstein allegedly blacklisting her for refusing a role. She also sued Canary Black producers for unsafe filming conditions that injured her knee. Hollywood responded with silence. She keeps working (Wildcat came out in 2025), but the narrative has shifted from action star to woman with receipts.

Before Underworld, she was reading French and Russian literature at New College, Oxford, and got her first film role during her first year there. She left without finishing her degree. Her father, Richard Beckinsale, was a beloved British sitcom actor (Porridge, Rising Damp) who died of a heart attack at 31 when she was five. She's described his death as formative. The 2024 hospitalization that generated tabloid body-shaming was tied to grief over her stepfather Roy Battersby's death and her mother Judy Loe's stage 4 cancer diagnosis. She has said the grief burned a hole in her oesophagus.