Kathrin Romary "Kate" Beckinsale (born 26 July 1973) is an English actress. After some minor television roles, she made her film debut in Much Ado About Nothing (1993) while still a student at Oxford University. She then appeared in British costume dramas such as Prince of Jutland (1994), Cold Comfort Farm(1995), Emma (1996), and The Golden Bowl (2000), in addition to various stage and radio productions. She began to seek film work in the United States in the late 1990s and, after appearing in small-scale dramas The Last Days of Disco (1998) and Brokedown Palace (1999), she had a break-out year in 2001 with starring roles in the war film Pearl Harbor and the romantic comedy Serendipity. She built on this success with appearances in the biopic The Aviator (2004) and the comedy Click (2006).

Beckinsale became known as an action star following an appearance in 2003's Underworld and has since starred in many action films, including Van Helsing(2004), Underworld: Evolution (2006), Whiteout (2009), as well as Contraband, Underworld: Awakening, and Total Recall (all in 2012). She also makes occasional appearances in smaller dramatic projects such as Snow Angels (2007), Winged Creatures (2008), Nothing but the Truth (for which she earned a Critic's Choice Award nomination in 2008), and Everybody's Fine (2009). She will next appear in the legal drama The Trials of Cate McCall and the psychological thriller Eliza Graves.

Born and raised in London, Beckinsale's parents are actor Richard Beckinsale (1947–1979) and actress Judy Loe. She had an eight-year relationship with Welsh actor Michael Sheen from 1995 until 2003; they have one daughter. She married American film director Len Wiseman in 2004 and relocated to Brentwood, Los Angeles. She has worked occasionally as a model in television and print campaigns to promote Gap denim, Diet Coke, Absolut Vodka, and Lux shampoo.

Kathrin Romary Beckinsale was born in London, England. She is the only child of actor Richard Beckinsale and actress Judy Loe. Her father was of one-quarter Burmese descent.She made her first television appearance at the age of four, in an episode of This is Your Life dedicated to her father. When she was five years old, her 31-year-old father died suddenly of a heart attack. Beckinsale was deeply traumatised by the loss and "started expecting bad things to happen". While she has seen her father "more on television than I have in life", "there are certainly enough memories for me not to feel that it's somebody I didn't know." Her widowed mother moved in with director Roy Battersby when Beckinsale was nine and she was brought up alongside his four sons and daughter. She has a close relationship with her step-father: "I couldn't have knitted a better one ... He wasn't pushy, he let me come to him."She has a paternal half-sister, actress Samantha Beckinsale, but they have not had regular contact. Beckinsale was educated at the fee-paying Godolphin and Latymer School in Hammersmith, West London and was involved with the Orange Tree Youth Theatre.^[10] She was a two-time winner of the WH Smith Young Writers Award for both fiction and poetry. She has described herself as a "late bloomer": "All of my friends were kissing boys and drinking cider way before me. I found it really depressing that we weren't making camp fires and everyone was doing grown-up stuff."^[12] "I loathed being a teenager."She had a nervous breakdown and developed anorexia at the age of 15 and underwent Freudian psychoanalysis for four years.