Kate Beckinsale

Biography of Kate Beckinsale

Kathrin "Kate" Romany Beckinsale was born on July 26, 1973 in London, England. She is a British actress.

Beckinsale is the daughter of British television actors Richard Beckinsale and Judy Loe, and the younger half-sister of actress Samantha Beckinsale. Her father died in 1979 at the age of 31. After graduating from school, she began acting. In 1991 she took on a role in a television film about the Second World War, which made her famous in Great Britain in particular. She then began studying (French and Russian literature) at the University of Oxford.

During her first year at Oxford, Beckinsale was offered a role in Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing, an adaptation of Shakespeare's comedy of the same name.

For Because you exist she moved to America. The breakthrough came with Pearl Harbor and her first action film Underworld, which was followed by several sequels. She portrayed Ava Gardner in the film Aviator, about the life of Howard Hughes.

Beckinsale has a daughter (born January 31, 1999) with actor Michael Sheen. On May 9, 2004, she married director Len Wiseman, whom she knew from filming Underworld. In November 2015 it was announced that the couple had separated after eleven years of marriage. From January to April 2019 she was in a relationship with Pete Davidson.

At the end of 2009, the readers of the US magazine Esquire voted her the Sexiest Woman Alive. The following year she was appointed to the competition jury at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival.