In the fictional subculture that makes up “Underworld,” vampires and werewolves are mortal enemies engaged in a secret war that humans are blissfully unaware of. Kate Beckinsale stars as Selene, a vampire warrior who forms an unprecedented bond with a human, Dr. Michael Corvin (Scott Speedman), who is being hunted by the werewolves. Selene must protect Michael while unraveling the mystery behind the werewolves' desire to kidnap the young doctor.
Though she plays a vampire, Kate Beckinsale was quick to point out this is an action movie. Revealing that her favorite movies are from the action genre, Beckinsale always has an eye out for a well-written script that revolves around a great female action character. When she first took a look at the script for “Underworld,” she almost put it aside without considering it. “I got [the script] with a pile of scripts and this was one the top. It said vampires and werewolves and I said, ‘Oh God, I better put this to one side.’ Then I opened it up and the director had done these amazing drawings, he’s an incredible artist. They were really not what I was expecting.”
Unlike most horror movies, this movie doesn’t rely on the classic myths and legends surrounding the killing of vampires and werewolves. “We heal like vampires do. We don’t have a whole lot about garlic and crucifixes. We don’t have any of that. It’s much more high-tech than that. The werewolves kill with ultraviolet bullets that shoot daylight into us. I can jump from this great height and land. We don’t turn into bats. None of the stuff that kind of makes me feel a bit [creepy] about doing a vampire movie is really in it, which I was kind of glad about. We shoot the werewolves with silver nitrate bullets. It’s really just having a couple of big-ass Glocks,” explained Beckinsale.
Even the biting is kept to a minimum in “Underworld.” Bags of blood are used at feeding time and though Beckinsale’s character Selene does give Scott Speedman’s character a nip in the neck, according to Beckinsale, it’s done in a friendly, life-saving way. Without revealing too much of the storyline Beckinsale explained the ‘friendly’ bite by carefully describing it as necessary since the plot has to do with the mixing of bloodlines.
Much of the filming was done in Budapest, and the outfit ‘Selene’ wears was not the most comfortable under the extreme weather conditions the cast encountered during the shoot. Beckinsale described the conditions as awful, saying, “The first thing that we shot was the subway, [where] there was no air conditioning. It was boiling hot in there. The outfit was out of latex, I think – the stuff they make condoms out of. If it’s hot, it gets really hot. If it’s cold, it gets really cold. And in Budapest it goes from [blazing hot to winter] in one day. It was kind of uncomfortable.” Beckinsale went on to explain that there were some good points to be dressed in black latex, “I did kind of like the way it sort of holds everything in, in a good way. It kind of pushes everything up to where it actually ought to be in life.”
NEXT PAGE: More on "Underworld," and her roles in "Van Helsing" and "Aviator"
ADDITIONAL "UNDERWORLD" INTERVIEWS:
Scott Speedman / Director Len Wiseman
