My daughter is off to college and it’s scary to be alone for first time in 20 years ..but then, I quite like being scared
MUM KATE ON FACING AN EMPTY NEST
LIKE many mums this week, Kate Beckinsale is facing up to the prospect of an empty nest as her daughter prepares to go to university.
As one of Hollywood’s most desirable stars she has rarely been alone, but with two marriages and a toyboy fling behind her, she is now free to follow her own wishes for the first time in over 20 years.
The trouble is, she’s not yet sure what to do with her freedom. Kate, 44, admits she finds it terrifying – but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
“It’s incredibly exciting and scary,” she says. “But then, I quite like being scared. I’ve lived under a structure of school terms for a long time.
“Now I have this open landscape which I haven’t had since I was 22.
“Separating is really hard, but it’s really important.
“It’s the time when you are really called on to be an adult, and the most adult thing you can do is let your children go.”
Kate is turning heads in the Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills. She is wearing an off-the-shoulder black-andwhite summer dress but no jewellery.
“It’s usually lent to me and I keep taking it off and leaving it places so I can’t really be trusted,” she laughs. “I’m always leaving it somewhere and getting into trouble.”
Kate has stayed in Los Angeles while 18-year-old Lily was going to school there. But the Pearl Harbor star has always missed Britain, where mum Judy and her closest friends live. Could she now be moving back?
“I go back a lot,” says Kate. “In the last year or two I’ve gone back to England so many times and I had that feeling of an aching familiarity.
“Yet it felt quite different as well, and that made me feel really odd.
“When you’ve been away from where you were brought up for more than five years, you’re a stranger everywhere, unfortunately.
“I’ve been here in Los Angeles because Lily has been in school and we intended to stay for that period. Now she’s no longer in school, that’s not the case any more, and that’s what is so lovely about this moment.
“I genuinely don’t know what I’m going to do and there is something incredibly luxurious about being able to say ‘I’ve no idea where I’ll be in a year’s time. I couldn’t possibly tell you’.”
Kate grew up in London, the daughter of actress Judy Loe and Porridge star Richard Beckinsale, who died from an undiagnosed heart defect when she was just six. Three years later her mum got together with TV director Roy Battersby, whose sons taught Kate how to smoke and swear.
At school Kate won prizes for her short stories and poetry, and
I’ve no idea where I’ll be in a year’s time, I couldn’t tell you KATE BECKINSALE ON HER NEW FREEDOM
went on to study Russian literature at Oxford. While still an undergraduate she landed her first film role as Hero in Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 film Much Ado About Nothing.
Aged 22 she married Michael Sheen, who played Tony Blair in 2006 film The Queen. They had daughter Lily, and Kate hit the Hollywood big time in 2001’s Pearl Harbor.
When Kate landed a role in 2003 film Underworld she persuaded director Len Wiseman to give Michael a role.
Kate and Michael split and she then got together with Len. All three have always insisted Kate and Len, 44, only got together after her marriage was over.
She remains close friends with Michael, 48, and has starred with him in two Underworld sequels. She says: “We are very lucky. I spent nearly 10 years with Michael. I really value my friendship with him and the fact he’s Lily’s dad.”
Kate and Len separated in 2015 before filing for divorce last year.
This summer she had a romance with US TV comedian Matt Rife, who at 21 was less than half her age, but sources say it “fizzled out”.
Now Kate is focusing on her career. Having enjoyed critical acclaim in last year’s Love and Friendship, with work on the sixth Underworld film just finished, she now stars in new film The Only Boy Living in New York. In it she plays a woman who embarks on affairs with a father, played by Pierce Brosnan, and his son. Wherever her next move takes her, she is sure to bring one of her most prized possessions – her pantomime horse costume. “I do tend to travel with it just in case of a low moment or I’m bored or something,” she says. “Generally, I get the horse on and just cheer up immediately. I pop up and down the corridor dressed as a horse. No one knows it’s me.” She pauses, thinks for a moment, then laughs: “They probably do now, unfortunately.”