KATE BECKINSALE - "DOING THE LOVE SCENE WAS EASY - I
DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT MOVING PARTS.."
____________________________________________________
by Harold von Kursk
GQ Italy
LOS ANGELES - Without question, Kate Beckinsale is a
very sexy woman. However, she's doubly hot when
wearing an ultra-tight fitting spandex suit in her new
film, UNDERWORLD: EVOLUTION. If ever there was an
action film that captured a femme fatale in all her
menacing sexual fury, this is the one! There's even a
racy sex scene between her characater, the predatory
Selene, and co-star Scott Speedman which had the
distinction of being directed by her husband, Len
Wiseman.
"I didn't find it so strange being directed by my
husband in that scene, I think we both found it kind
of kinky," says Beckinsale. "It was more that Scott
Speedman was feeling a bit uncomfortable. But it's
always that way for men doing any love scene - I mean,
it's easy for me, I don't have to worry about any
moving parts! (Smiles) So Scott just tied his penis
up in a double-knot so it wouldn't move about and that
way he didn't have to worry about my being flattered
or disappointed depending on his level
of...interest!?"
Certainly, Beckinsale's limbs get a workout in the
long-awaited sequel to UNDERWORLD, which sees her
becoming even more physical in many combat sequences
against enemy vampires and other nasties. The film
certainly got off to a roaring start at the North
American box office, opening up as the number one film
with a first-week estimated gross of $40 million. The
prospect of seeing Beckinsale in her slinky catsuit
and in varying stages of undress clearly stoked the
fires of male audiences, and kinky Kate had no qualms
about making the most of her fetching feline physique.
In conversation, the 32-year-old Beckinsale opened up
about her sex symbol status, married life, and the
pleasures of being a vampire babe.
THE INTERVIEW
Q: Kate, sorry to bother you about the details, but
surely there must have been some awkward moments for
you and your husband while he's choreographing your
sex scene with Scott Speedman?
BECKINSALE: It was much worse for Scott who was having
to deal with my body pressed up against his and with
my husband standing a few feet away.
I had a bit of an advantage in that Len could
choreograph a lot of the movements at home in bed with
me where obviously he wouldn't feel the same freedom
or inclination with Scott! (Laughs) But my husband is
very precise, and so he did have to tell poor Scoot,
"well, grab her breast now, lift your leg, now get on
top of her," things like that.
So naturally Scott is getting a bit anxious and I
could see that but by the end of the day of shooting
one more angle and one more close-up he was pretty
cool about everything. In the end, it was all just a
lot of thrashing around and then cut, and then a bit
of thrashing around again, then cut, do the close-up.
It's not as perverse as one might expect.
Q: Do you get to do more personal combat this time
around?
BECKINSALE: Yes. It's very intense hand-to-hand or
foot-to-body personal combat. My character Selene is
much more of a lone warrior in the sequel and she does
some very heavy ass-kicking. I also get to fire this
fabulous machine-gun with one hand and that looks very
cool. We've really ramped up the intensity of
everything and that's the advantage of having learnt a
lot from the first Underworld and knowing what works
and where you can take the characters and the action
to a higher level.
Q: What was it like slipping back into the same black
latex suit after a three-year absence?
BECKINSALE: It's pure hell. You forget what a
horrifying experience it was the first time around and
then you're three years older, you're maybe not as
tight and super-fit as you were the first time around,
and then you've got to stuff yourself in head-to-toe
latex.
As it turned out, I got myself in pretty good shape
and I don't think I look too bad in the suit. I mean,
everything shows in it! But you tend to forget you're
wearing it when you're in it the whole damn day and
night.
Every time I would bend over or stretch myself in some
way there would be five grips gasping and groaning and
that's when you realise that you're not just wearing
your regular pair of jeans!
Q: You've now down three vampire films, both
UNDERWORLD movies and VAN HELSING. Are you going Goth
on us?
BECKINSALE: No. I'm actually not Goth and never have
been, although I did go through a period in university
(BECKINSALE read literature and language at Oxford and
speaks fluent Russian! - ED) where for some
inexplicable reason I thought I looked fascinating
putting my hear up like a Geisha with all the sticks
in it and wearing very pale make-up! I'm still living
down that phase.
But I love the latex look and the sort of sexual
menace that comes with it. I thought of surprising
Len in bed one night by doing the whole vampire thing
with him but I didn't want to give him any lasting
complexes.
I did however enjoy jumping around on the set in the
latex and in a way you do kind of get off on that
whole look.
Q: Since you've already confessed in print that you
and your husband occasionally go in for webcam private
viewings, maybe the latex suit could come in handy?
BECKINSALE: (Laughs) Yes, of course. But usually Len
likes to tell me what outfits he wants me to wear.
Also, I hate to disappoint everyone, but I'm just not
into latex, and especially not the super skin-tight
suit I wore on Underworld. You can only maintain the
illusion so long! I give myself the allowance to put
on a few pounds when I'm not shooting a film.
Q: Would you consider doing another Underworld a few
years down the road if this sequel proves a success?
BECKINSALE: Perhaps, but if they want me to play
Selene again, I can't imagine having to squeeze my
ass and waist into that suit at 40! So they better do
it fast before I become matronly.
Q. Your husband said it was an easy decision for him
to come back and do the sequel - was it the same for
you?
BECKINSALE: It was great. It was one of those things
where we’d had so much fun on the first one and we all
made good friends and we got to go again and we had
more money to do it a bit more like he wanted it and
we’d just got married. In this business you find that
you just get married and then you’re separated for
four months so it was actually very nice that we could
go off and do a little home movie (laughs). I feel
like everyone is looking at our holiday snaps and
critiquing it.
Q. Was it exciting to learn how to run and build
muscles or was it just work?
BECKINSALE: No, it was the first time I’d ever had to
do anything physical in a movie before and that was
one of the things that attracted me. I’d done a movie
in French and I’d done Shakespeare so it was nice to
be off your game and learn new stuff. And I found it
very liberating just as a woman to be in the position
to be powerful. It was good for me.
I really had to train a lot. And I had done ‘Van
Helsing’ just prior as part of my training, so that
made things easier. So this time we still had the
training period but everybody was much more aware of
what our strengths and weaknesses - especially our
weaknesses - were this time so they knew kind of what
we had to work on.
There's a lot more fighting this time. It’s cheaper
just to fire a few guns than it is to actually
choreograph a huge great big fight sequence. So this
time we have a little more money and we have got a lot
more fist fighting and running about. So we practiced
that a lot.
Q. How do you feel about the press continually
speculating about your have had your boobs done?
BECKINSALE: I take it as a compliment because they're
all mine and they expanded of their own free will when
I was shooting THE AVIATOR and I was twenty pounds
heavier for the role since I was playing Ava Gardner
and women were so much rounder and full-figured than
is the norm now. But of course it sparked this wave
of "boob job" reports and it's such nonsense.
Q: One of the interesting things about your character
in UNDERWORLD is that Selene is a fairly complex
character compared to the usual cardboard action hero?
BECKINSALE: I hope audiences agree with you. We tried
to capture some of the loneliness and desperation of
someone in that state of mind and forced to deal with
terrifying threats. We wanted people to appreciate
that her immortality is a curse as much as some
strange gift. I wasn't interested in just playing her
as some poor vampire girl who gets filmed in a flimsy
nightie with one boob hanging out and is covered in
blood and finds herself in one bloodbath after
another.
Q: Do you find it odd that you spent ten years with
your first husband and then fell immediately into
another relationship with the man, Len Wiseman, who is
now your husband? Would you have preferred some time
to play the field, so to speak?
BECKINSALE: No. There's a lot of torture that comes
with being a single woman in Hollywood because every
time you would become involved with another actor,
let's say, the tabloids start following your every
move and you don't have any peace of mind. I'm very
happy to have met Len at a time when my marriage was
essentially over and Michael (Sheen, her first husband
- ED) and I had become unhappy parents and an unhappy
couple.
So for me it was wonderful to have met someone that I
could build something long-lasting and share my life
with. I would have been slightly terrified to go
through the dating process and deal with the
responsibilities of being a single mom and managing my
career at the same time. I'm afraid I crave the
stability that comes with being married.
Q: Does some of that craving come from the fact that
you had something of a tortured childhood?
BECKINSALE: It's possible. I was overly intellecual
and completely wrapped up in my private phantasy
world. I remember convincing myself that the
babysitter was trying to poison me. My mom still has
the letter I wrote to her saying that the babysitter
had poisoned the jam tart.
I also become obsessed with the notion of spontaneous
combustion. I had this fear that I would be one of
those one in billion victims of this supposed
phenomenon. One day I took some ashes from the
fireplace and put them in a pair of empty shoes
waiting for my mother to come home. And when she did,
she looked at them, and just walked right past. My
mum was much too smart for her child with the
overactive imagination!
Q: Do you ever get tired of being considered a sex
symbol?
BECKINSALE: I feel that I'm growing weary of having
to maintain my body in a certain shape for fear that
the paparazzi are going to catch me on one of those
days when you look so awful and every magazine runs
those photos of you looking that way. But in a way
it's an incentive to keep fit and not give in to my
usual impulse which is to sit in bed for hours and
read.
All the attention paid towards my appearance is a
strangely flattering thing because I spent my
childhood as an ugly duckling and then suddenly I
blossomed and I still felt strange because of that
kind of attention. And so I spent six or seven years
trying to deny that I was attractive and dressed and
behaved accordingly. But I worked that all out and
now all I need to erase any doubts about myself is to
get into the latex suit if I need to feel really hot!
