Kate and comedy? It all just clicked
If you don’t think of Kate Beckinsale as being a particularly funny woman, it may be because there’s nothing amusing about killing vampires and even fewer chuckles to be had from actually being a bloodsucker.
After bucking for action star status with films like “Van Helsing,” “Underworld” and “Underworld: Evolution,” Beckinsale is mixing things up with “Click.”
She plays the wife of Adam Sandler‘s character, a harried family man who receives a magical universal remote control.
The lowbrow comedy seems like a stretch for Beckinsale, until you recall how many of her early successes – films like “Much Ado About Nothing,” “Cold Comfort Farm” and the 1996 BBC movie “Emma” – came in lighter fare.
“Actually, for me it was kind of a personal thing, I think, because my father had been in England a very well-known comedy actor, and I think I was very attracted to that because I had grown up on it,” Beckinsale says.
“But I think I also slightly tried to steer clear of it – just I didn’t want to tread on anyone else’s patch, I kind of wanted to be on my own patch.”
Richard Beckinsale, star of the British comedies “Rising Damp” and “Porridge,” died of a heart attack when his daughter was only 5.
“And then on this movie I actually turned a year older than my father got to, and it was a very liberating moment finding myself,” she says.
“I made it to 32 and I’m in a comedy and everyone’s being really nice, and I wasn’t away from the family because we shot in L.A. and my daughter was around. And it was just like a blissful and lovely sort of blossoming moment for me, you know.”
Beckinsale admits that she had some reservations about appearing in the long-suffering spouse role in a Sandler summer comedy – concerns that never materialized.
“I had such an amazing time on the movie,” she says. “I really did think, you know, that I might just be this sort of roaming pair of breasts that wouldn’t quite fit. You know what I mean? Everybody would be watching sports and I’d be kind of tolerated and then I might bend over and it might be an event.”
Instead, she enjoyed being part of the boys’ club atmosphere – and playing Sandler’s cinematic spouse.
“How was it being married to him? I thoroughly enjoyed it,” Beckinsale laughs. “I didn’t have to take him home, I didn’t have to yell at him about going and playing golf or all of that stuff that would probably really bug me in real life if I was married to him.”
The experience also made a Sandler fan out of her daughter, Lily.
“My daughter has decided that he’s a relative,” Beckinsale says.
“(He’s) just generous and brilliant to work with. I mean, really, I was so bummed out when it was over. I felt like summer camp had ended.”
The birthday bunch
Director Sidney Lumet is 82. Actress June Lockhart is 81. Singer Carly Simon is 61. Actor-comedian Jimmie Walker is 59. TV personality Phyllis George is 57. Singer George Michael is 43. Actress Linda Cardellini is 31.