‘I’ve always been somebody who’s dying to work at home’

Kate Beckinsale tells Georgia Humphreys why she signed up for The Widow before the script was finished

Marks & Spencer, black cabs and her mum; three things Kate Beckinsale, quite understandably, misses about life in the UK.

Never mind the fact that, over here, “everyone has the same silly references that you have, and a certain sort of sense of humour.

“Most particularly in men... There’s a kind of machismo in America,” says the Londonborn actress, 45, who now lives in California.

“I love that English men have a kind of self-deprecating humour about themselves, on the whole. It’s really healthy, and I miss that.”

It’s been 26 years since Beckinsale made her film debut in Much Ado About Nothing, while still a student at Oxford University.

She later moved to work in Hollywood, and became famous for a variety of roles including Pearl Harbor and the Underworld series.

But last year saw her return to the UK for a job - new ITV drama The Widow, in which she plays the lead role, Georgia Wells.

The story follows Georgia as her search to solve the disappearance of her husband Will (played by Matthew Le Nevez) leads her to the Congo.

For Beckinsale, the character was “somebody who has had blow after blow personally, and was in an incredibly vulnerable state of retreat.

“She’s moved to this very remote area of Wales, she doesn’t interact with human beings very much, she’s depressed and at a crossroads in her life,” she says.

In the first episode, Georgia is sitting in a doctor’s waiting room watching the news, when she sees a man on-screen who she thinks might be her husband.

The next thing you know, she’s jumping on a plane to the Congo to find out if it could really be him, considering she believed he died in a plane crash three years prior.

Does Beckinsale think she would act in the same way in Georgia’s situation?

“It’s one of those things that’s very common when somebody’s lost a loved one.

0 Kate Beckinsale in ITV thriller The Widow

Almost everyone’s had that weird experience when they’re on the tube and think they see them, or they’re somewhere public, ‘Oh my god, there’s my boyfriend or my dad or my mum’, and that’s such a jarring thing,” says the actress, who is the only child of actors Richard Beckinsale and Judy Loe (her father died suddenly aged 31 in 1979).

Initially she was only given the first few episodes to read (the rest weren’t written yet).

So, she signed on completely unaware of the outcome of the series, which is written by brothers Harry and Jack Williams, also responsible for hit dramas such as The Missing and Liar.

“It was intriguing to receive the first few episodes and go, ‘I wonder what’s going to happen to this woman,’ but at the same time, it’s a bit unnerving. Normally you’re not four months into shooting when you find out what happens at the end,” says Beckinsale.

The actress has appeared on-screen a couple of times with daughter Lily-mo Sheen, in rom-com Click and Underworld: Evolution.

But she isn’t sure the 20-year-old, whose dad is Welsh actor Michael Sheen (he and Beckinsale met while starring in a play together in 1995, but they split in 2003) will end up following her

parents’ footsteps into the acting industry full-time.

“She’s an extremely talented actress. She’s also very good at a lot of other things. One of the nice things about the university years is that you get to really feel your way through to see what your deep passion is. She’s got a lot of options.”

There has been a fair bit of media attention on Beckinsale’s love life over the years – most recently she’s been papped on what looks like dates with 25-year-old Pete Davidson, a comedian known for Saturday Night Live.

But while there’s no denying she’s a much-talked about star, she comes across as charmingly down to earth.

“There’s an English shop here where you can buy food that you would never buy in England, so you find yourself coming home, emotionally clutching a bag full of brown sauce and Instant Whip and things like that, that you’d never buy at home,” she says.

Asked whether being part of The Widow has whetted her appetite to come back to the UK to work, Beckinsale swiftly responds: “I have to say, I’ve never not had an appetite to film in Britain. I haven’t been asked very often lately.

“I will actually be filming at the end of this year in London, which is really nice. I started out with English crews and British crews and that’s where my real comfort zone is. I’ve always been somebody who’s dying to work at home.”

“Normally you’re not four months into shooting when you find out what happens at the end”

● The Widow starts on ITV tonight at 9pm.