KATE BECKINSALE ON
AFTER playing a vampire hunter and a vampire warrior, it’s fair to say Kate Beckinsale likes getting her teeth into a role.
But the British star might not have tasted such big screen success had it not been for a fairy godmother... in the shape of Hollywood’s Uma Thurman.
Kate has revealed that when she first moved to New York with then partner Michael Sheen and their baby daughter, Uma put them up in a mansion as they found their feet.
Sure, there were a few cockroaches. And it was crumbling here and there.
But Uma did right by them and furnished the place which, in truth, had huge potential.
GRAND
Kate was eternally grateful and talks fondly of Pulp Fiction star Uma, 51.
She says: “We got out there and Michael hadn’t really got it together to find us somewhere to live and so Uma Thurman... casually... went, ‘Well I’ve got a brownstone I’m not using’. So I kind of went ‘Oh, okay!’
“There were a lot of cockroaches, but it was this incredibly grand, sort of falling apart... in the West Village. I think James Gandolfini bought it while we were still living there. But we were just these t***s from England who hadn’t really got it together.
“There was a lot of wildlife in it. It was a kind of crumbling situation, but it was so nice of her and it really rescued us and sometimes she’d come and visit and it would feel like the Queen arrived. She is just so incredible because she got it furnished. She’s like a fairy godmother, royal family, she’s amazing.”
Kate got to know Uma when they filmed period drama The Golden Bowl. It was 1999 and Michael landed a Broadway role in Amadeus, a few months after daughter Lily as born.
The move to New York was a gamble. Kate, who stars in Amazon Prime’s new action comedy movie Jolt, says it was “sort of against my wishes because I had just had a baby and was like, ‘Do I want to move to New York? I don’t know anyone really... you’re going to be by yourself with a baby’.”
Kate and Michael, now 52, split in 2003 after eight years together. But Kate, talking on podcast Armchair Expert, says the pair remained on good terms – and he is still “really close family”.
She told American comedian
Dax Shepard on the podcast: “He’s someone I’ve known since I was 21. I love him a lot. I especially think if you have kids with someone you try and focus on all the good bits.
“Also, when you’re not in a relationship with someone any more, 90% of the stuff that’s so bothersome and tricky is not because you’re not having to live with them.
“You don’t have to worry and it’s not affecting you directly. I
Uma let us use house... she visited and it was like Queen had arrived! KATE BECKINSALE ON HER MOVE TO NEW YORK
think for women in relationships with men, culturally it’s quite easy to lose track of your own s***. It doesn’t seem like a big deal but once you get out of a marriage and you don’t ever find yourself saying ‘I don’t mind’ and you’re doing what you like, it is amazing. I highly recommended it.”
Kate married director Len Wiseman after they fell in love on the set of the Underworld franchise, with Len’s then-wife Dana claiming they’d had an affair – which they denied. They divorced in 2016 after 12 years of marriage, citing “irreconcilable differences”.
Kate – a vampire warrior in Underworld and a vampire hunter’s love interest in Van Helsing
– has since dated Ariana Grande’s ex-fiancé Pete Davidson, who is 20 years her junior.
Before meeting Pete, she was linked to British comic Jack Whitehall, 33, when they were seen on a night out.
And another comedian, 25-year-old Matt Rife, said he dated Kate for a year in 2017. He said the relationship was