Kate Beckinsale doesn’t like people to feel sorry for her and is usually quick to let them know it.
When fans expressed concern this year about her appearance, she accused them of “insidious bullying.”
“Every time I post something… I get accused of having unrecognizable surgery, having Botox or fillers, or being obsessed with looking younger,” the 51-year-old actress wrote online. “Actually, I don’t do any of those things.”
In May, when a social media follower said she looked “a little skinny,” she responded: “The fact that you like fatter girls than me doesn’t figure into things that are important or relevant.”
And when she was seen in a wheelchair with an ice pack around her head last November, she insisted that she had not simply had plastic surgery, but had simply gone to the dentist.
“I’m sorry for setting a bad example and not allowing myself to get an infection, not treat it, get sepsis and die,” she replied angrily.
Her Instagram profile, which has 5.6 million followers, is filled with defiant photos of her in thigh-high dresses, lace underwear and tiny swimsuits, one of which bears the slogan in bright ink: “No “I asked for your opinion.”
So it’s safe to assume she’ll bristle at comments about her last public appearance, a red carpet event in Los Angeles last week.
Dressed in a corseted pink satin minidress and platform stiletto heels, she had a striking figure. However, concerns about her weight and the issue of cosmetic surgery came to the fore again.
Appearing at the Variety Power of Women event in Los Angeles in October, Beckinsale’s appearance drew criticism from online trolls.
Online trolls criticized Beckinsale’s weight and mocked her cosmetic surgery after her appearance on the Variety red carpet last month.
‘What does Hollywood have against aging gracefully?’ asked a fan.
Another said: ‘She used to be a bomb. I don’t even recognize her now.
Despite living in Hollywood, land of celebrity ‘tweakment’, since the nineties, British Kate has repeatedly denied having any cosmetic help.
In fact, he says, a condition called mast cell activation syndrome means he “can’t risk” such treatments because his body is prone to severe allergic reactions.
The only cosmetic treatment she admits to receiving is platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy, the so-called “blood facial,” in which plasma is extracted from the blood and injected into the skin.
But for those close to the actress, there are more pressing concerns than her appearance. For the star of the 2001 film Pearl Harbor and the vampire franchise Underworld, whose latest film, Canary Black, is No. 1 on Amazon Prime, her life has been shattered again and again.
A year ago, Kate posted a Sylvia Plath quote: “If I make it through this year, no matter how bad it is, it will be the greatest victory I have ever achieved.”
A close contact of Kate said: “It has been a difficult time and continues to be a difficult time.”
‘She’s been very open about it. He could hide and stay home, but he doesn’t want to. She likes to dress up and go out. He has a movie to promote.
After losing her father, Porridge and Rising Damp star Richard Beckinsale, in 1979 when she was just five, this year she lost another father figure, her stepfather, the man she called “My best friend, my Roy “, who died of a stroke in January at the age of 87.
Roy Battersby, director of great television series such as Inspector Morse, Cracker and A Touch Of Frost, entered Kate’s life three years after her father’s death.
Kate Beckinsale lost her father, Richard Beckinsale (pictured right), the star of Porridge and Rising Damp, in 1979 when she was just five years old.
Kate’s mother, actress Judy Loe (pictured right), 77, has had her own health problems, quietly battling stage four breast cancer for six years.
In a video addressed to his fans on Father’s Day, he said: “Now I’m two down.” This is the first time since I was five and eight that I have no one to call today.
Kate’s mother, actress Judy Loe, 77, has had her own health problems, quietly battling stage four breast cancer for six years.
And Kate herself spent six weeks in hospital this year, suffering a tear to her oesophagus, which she said was “caused by a year’s worth of stress”. To compound her pain, her Persian cat, Clive, died last June at age 19, leaving her “totally devastated.”
Then, more recently, she became embroiled in a legal battle with a Los Angeles spa owner who accused her of owing £2,000 for massages and whom she accused of sexual assault, an accusation he denies.
Born in Chiswick, west London, the only child of Judy and Richard, Kate has lived her entire life in the spotlight, making her screen debut aged four in a cameo in a 1977 episode of This is Your Life dedicated to his father.
Richard died at age 31, two years later, in his sleep, from a heart attack caused by undiagnosed coronary artery disease.
Beckinsale dated fellow British actor Martin Sheen from 1995 to 2003, and the couple welcomed a daughter, Lily, in 1999.
Tragically, that same night, Kate’s mother was in the hospital, recovering from an operation to unblock her fallopian tubes, so she could have more children.
When she came out, she learned that her operation had been a success, but that her husband had died.
Kate, who had been cared for by a family friend who came to care for her at home, says she still suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder “after discovering my very
The near-dead corpse of his young father when he was a very small child alone at night,” a trauma that has been “reactivated” by losing Roy all these years later.
Every year on Richard’s birthday and the day he died, she posts a tribute on social media. Recently, she wrote: ‘I don’t remember what it feels like to not miss him. It’s part of me, like my blood.
In 1983, her mother met Roy and Kate found herself with five teenage stepbrothers, which made her feel “invaded.”
At the age of 11, he was in therapy. At age 15, he began chain smoking and developed anorexia; At its lowest point it weighed five kilos.
Despite her unhappiness, Kate, who has an IQ of 152, excelled at her girls’ school in west London, before gaining a place at Oxford to read French and Russian literature.
Beckinsale and Sheen remain ‘close friends’ to this day even though they split more than two decades ago.
At the end of her freshman year, she was cast in Kenneth Branagh’s film Much Ado About Nothing, playing the virginal hero alongside Emma Thompson and Keanu Reeves. It raised £17 million and Kate became a rising star.
Then, while appearing in The Seagull on stage in Bath, she met Welsh actor Michael Sheen. They fell in love, moved to the United States, and Kate found great success with a starring role in Pearl Harbor. In 1999 their daughter, Lily, was born.
Her career was flourishing, but Kate found herself dealing with sexism, including a “business” meeting with embarrassed producer Harvey Weinstein in which she answered the door to his hotel room in a bathrobe. Her relationship with Sheen was also suffering. At only 25 years old, when he had Lily and thousands of miles from his family, it was a lonely time.
In 2003 they separated. She then married American Underworld director Len Wiseman and divorced nine years later.
Sheen, 55, found love with Swedish actress Anna Lundberg, 30, but Kate has not settled, despite a series of affairs with younger men.
She calls herself “dumb” and refuses to live up to the stereotype of an older woman in Los Angeles. Last year, when she turned 50, she arrived dressed as a Playboy bunny.
In Canary Black, in which she plays a CIA agent, she is proud to have done her own stunts. “She was determined to make them herself,” says a friend. “She took some really nasty injuries.”
Kate divides her time between Los Angeles and London, where she is inseparable from her mother. A recent Instagram clip shows them joking around on a playground, where he films Judy playing hopscotch.
“If my mother has taught me anything, it’s that when life sends you something unexpected, you still have to laugh,” he said recently. “We’ve gotten through anything and we’ll get through it.”
