KATE BECKINSALE was born 26 July 1973 in England, and has resided in London for most of her life. Her mother is Judy Loe, born in Manchester, England, and graduated from the University of Birmingham with a degree in English and Drama. Ms. Loe has appeared in a number of British dramas and sitcoms, and continues to work as an actress, predominantly in British television productions. Her father was Richard Beckinsale, born in Nottingham, England. He starred in a number of popular British television comedies during the 1970s, most notably the television series Rising Damp and The Lovers.

He passed away in 1979. Kate has one older half-sister, Samantha Beckinsale, who is also an actress and has appeared in some recent British television programmes and commercials. Kate was not close to her half-sister as she grew up; after a brief meeting when she was very young, the two did not meet again until 1995. Kate attended the public (private school to U.S. readers) Godolphin and Latymer School in London for her grade and primary school education. In her teens, she twice won the British bookseller W. H. Smith Young Writers' competition--once for three short stories and once for three poems. After a tumultuous adolescence, she gradually took up the profession of acting. Adults would ask her if she was going to be an actress while she grew up, so the career path was always there as a possibility for her. She stated, "I fell into acting quietly and gently, starting with parts in the school play, then little bits in films."

Kate's first professional acting experience was playing the anguished young Alice Mair (a very minor voiceover part) in the 1991 Anglia Television serial production of P.D. James's Devices and Desires. Her major acting debut came later that year in a World War II television movie called One Against the Wind, filmed in Luxembourg during the summer of 1991. She played the part of Barbe, the rebellious daughter of Mary Lindell (Judy Davis). It first aired on American television that December. Kate also had a "forgettable" part in a short film about industrial accidents before she left for university. A career set-back came that year in the last-minute decision to cast Juliette Binoche, not Kate, as Cathy in the 1991 film of Wuthering Heights. Kate began attending Oxford University's New College in the fall of 1991, majoring in French and Russian literature. In an interview, Kate said she chose this study because "I was thinking of acting in different languages."

She had already decided that she wanted to act, but to broaden her horizons she chose university over drama school. Kate planned to study during the regular year, and work in the film industry during the summer. Becoming involved with the Oxford student community theatre groups led to her appearance in their early 1992 production of View From The Bridge. The play had an added bonus; in the production, she also met her first real love, a fellow student by the name of Edmund Moriarity. While in her first year at Oxford, Kate received her big break in Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. She traveled to Tuscany, Italy, in the summer of 1992 to appear in the film, cast as the innocent Hero. Working to play Hero in a light that she would find favourable, a role in other productions that has sometimes portrayed the character as a naive girl in a minor role, she stated, "In Much Ado, I had to be careful not to make Hero a wimp. I don't want to play any drippy women, because I don't know any." Kate worked in three other films while attending Oxford, beginning with a part in the medieval historical drama Prince of Jutland (1993), cast as Ethel.

The film was shot during spring 1993 on location in Denmark, and she performed her supporting part during New College's Easter break. Later in the summer of that year, and after a dramatic--and captivating--change in her hair length and colour, she performed as the lead in the now-unobtainable contemporary mystery drama Uncovered (1994), filmed in Barcelona, Spain. Before she went back to school, Kate also worked in the first installment of Anna Lee, a short-lived Carnival Films/London Weekend Television detective series that appeared on Britain's ITV in the fall of 1993. She played Thea Hahn, the main character in the episode "Headcase". Her third year at university was spent at Oxford's study-abroad programme in Paris, France, immersing herself in the French language, Parisian culture, and those awful French cigarettes.

Putting her language classes to work, she co-starred (while bedecked with a large reddish-brown wig) in a French-language romantic comedy filmed in the French capital, Marie-Louise ou la permission (1994). A year away from the academic community and living on her own in the French capital caused her to re-evalate the direction of her life. She faced a choice: continue with school, or concentrate on her flourishing acting career. After much thought, she chose the acting career. In the spring of 1994 Kate left Oxford, after finishing three years of study. Kate stated in an interview, "I thought, `I'm not staying here. I don't really like it.'" And she kept open the option of eventually obtaining her degree, declaring "I could still go back, when university's no longer just about leaving home and doing kissing." Kate appeared in the BBC/Thames Television satire Cold Comfort Farm filmed in London and East Sussex during late summer 1994. When she was 14, she read Stella Gibbons' book and thought it a wonderful satire.

However, despite her fondness for the book, she almost did not get the part. "I was so desperate to play it. They thought I was too young," she said. She wrote to the film's director, John Schlesinger, to see her again while they were both in Paris, and persuaded him to cast her as the film's lead, Flora Poste. The film played once on BBC1-TV during New Year's Day 1995, and was released to the American art-film market in the spring of 1996. Cold Comfort Farm opened to spectacular reviews in the United States, grossing over US$5 million during its American cinema run. It was re-released to U.K. theatres in the spring of 1997. Acting on the stage consumed the first part of 1995; she toured in England with the Thelma Holts Theatre Company production of Chekov's The Seagull. The production was an interesting combination of her talents--she practiced her Russian while taking direction from a Georgian who spoke no English.

In June, she travelled to Italy once again with her current boyfriend, British actor Michael Sheen, whom she met earlier that year when performing in The Seagull, while he appeared in the Kenneth Branagh production of Othello. After turning down several mediocre scripts, "and going nearly berserk with boredom," she waited seven months before another interesting role was offered to her. Her big movie of 1995 was the romance/horror movie Haunted, starring opposite Adian Quinn and Sir John Gielgud, and filmed in West Sussex. In this film she wanted to play `an object of desire', unlike her past performances where her characters were much less the siren and more the worldly innocent. The several nude scenes in Haunted were played by another actress; Kate refused to bare all to the camera. "They took that much sex from the script," she said in an interview, showing a millimetre of space between her thumb and forefinger, "and made it into nearly 15 minutes of uninspired writhing. I despise that." In early 1996 she appeared in three off-West End London plays: Sweetheart in February, Clocks and Whistles in April, and Faithless in the spring.

In Sweetheart, she played the main character's neglected girlfriend, Toni. Clocks and Whistles was a different kind of part; Kate played Anne, a narcissistic actress who uses for her own ends the play's central character. (I do not have any information about her work in Faithless.) Kate's first film project of 1996 was the British ITV production of Jane Austin's novel Emma. "Emma is such an extraordinary character that I couldn't say no," she said. "She's quite unpleasant sometimes, which I always relish." Dialect coaching, costume fittings, hair extensions, and even singing lessons followed as Kate stepped into the role of the vivacious Emma Woodhouse.

"I love to do comedy," she says, adding that there's plenty of comedy in her character: "She's not very nice a lot of the time, so that's always fun, and if she had any idea what she was doing it would be a bit of a tragedy. But because she hasn't got any idea, it's funny." Emma completed production during the summer of 1996, and aired in the U.K. on the ITV television network in late November 1996. Unlike some of her earlier work, the reaction to her Emma varied wildly; some critics panned her acting while others applauded her less frivolous interpretation of the manipulative Miss Woodhouse. "She is kind of screwed up in several fairly major ways," Kate explained of the character. "She is rather spoiled, she is rather isolated, she is rather blind, and she can be very, very ruthless. You shouldn't necessarily like Emma. You do love her, but in the way the family of a teen-age girl could be exasperated by her outrageous behavior and still love her." Her last film of 1996 was the comedy Shooting Fish, filmed at Shepparton Studios in London during early fall. She played the part of Georgie, an altruistic con artist. It was released to European cinemas beginning in fall 1997. Shooting Fish was partially financed by British National Lottery proceeds, and was expected to do extremely well because of the very favourable reviews it has received at a number of European film festivals. It earned enought to become England's third-highest grossing film for 1997. While exploring new film projects for 1997, Kate participated in other British entertainment industry opportunities, providing the Nottingham-accented voice for a February BBC Radio 4 reading of Diana Hendry's "The Proposal," and composing with Michael Sheen (and a number of other notable British thespians, including her mother) a reading of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

She also completed a reading of an abridged version of Jane Austen's Emma. In the spring of 1997 Kate appeared in the video for George Michael/Toby Bourke's single "Waltz Away Dreaming". She was the flamboyant spirit inhabiting a whimsical dreamland as the singer remembered his late mother. She told a reporter in 1996 that she probably would not be moving to California and appearing in a Hollywood production, stating, "I don't want to put on tight frocks and hope somebody will give me work. And I think I'd miss my mum." But she would not rule out the States altogether: "If there was a jolly film being done in America, I'd do it." And her American adventure happened: first arriving in the U.S. in late spring 1997, Kate has completed a temporary move to Los Angeles, California, where she considered some American film industry projects. "I'd go there and work but I'd always come home," she said. She found a well-crafted project in which to appear; she played a young American facing life after college in the 1970s-era romantic comedy The Last Days of Disco, directed by Whit Stillman, and filmed in New York City in the waining days of summer 1997. Kate played a selfish young American recently graduated from college, who spends her time at a disco seeking romance and the answers to post-graduate life. The film was released in the U.S. in late May 1998, and in England later that fall. Kate's other 1997 project entailed more travel, this time to the other side of the world. Brokedown Palace, a drama that was filmed beginning late November 1997 in Manila, Philipines, and featured Kate and the American actress Claire Danes.

They played recent American high-school graduates who after secretly travelling to Bangkok, Thailand, are framed for smuggling heroin and are sentenced to 33 years imprisonment in a nightmare Midnight Express-like Thai prison. Brokedown Palace is expected for U.S. cinematic release in February 1998. Kate finished shooting Brokedown Palace in late February 1998, and stopped over in New York City on her way back to London. She spent some time in NYC doing numerous interviews for the American premieres of Shooting Fish and Last Days of Disco. Having been away from her new flat for over six months, she said in an interview that she was looking forward to decorating her house, and spending time with her boyfriend and five cats. She even liked coming back to America, saying that "she wouldn't mind living here [New York City]." After taking a few months off, she agreed to star in the U.K.'s Channel 4 film adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Through The Looking Glass. She played a grown-up Alice, who is transported to Never-Never Land while she reads the story to her daughter.

After being shot during August and September 1998 on the Isle of Man, it is scheduled to be shown on British television during Boxing Day. Her life has changed due to the impending arrival of her and her long-time boyfriend, Michael Sheen, first child, due sometime in early 1999. She will probably take some time off before resuming her budding film career.

Kate picks scripts that interest her, finding characters that offer a challenge and an opportunity to learn--"to nourish her soul," as she told an interviewer. She has played a extensive range of characters, everything from the Merchant-Ivory-ish Emma to the modern-day trickster Georgie in Shooting Fish, using her command of three different languages, and managing to fit into her CV parts as varied as a charming '20s flapper, a World War II French fascist collaborationist, or a circa 1981 New England disco swinger. In her acting career, Kate has been set on finding more true-to-life roles for females. "People should realize women aren't just whores or virgins," she told a reporter in 1993. "I want to see women who are real human beings."

--updated December 1998

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