Interview with Kate Beckinsale

Kate learned an interesting fact about herself while preparing for “Underworld,” she’s good with guns. “They hardly had to do any with me because I was naturally a genius at guns. I must say, I would never have known. I think the key to it is having enormous hands like a man, just to be able to unload them. I think if you’ve got small, delicate girly hands it’s hard to reach.”

Kate Beckinsale put her training sessions from “Underworld” to good use in the other vampire movie she’s just completed work on – “Van Helsing.” “They didn’t really have me do any for ‘Van Helsing.’ They’d say, ‘Today you’re doing a back flip.’ If they’d said that to me last year… But now it’s like, ‘Okay, I can do that.’ I had a huge problem with the ballroom dancing. That was the weirdest thing. I sucked so badly at the ballroom dancing. I’d said, ‘I didn’t really do sports when I was a kid, I mainly did like dancing and stuff,’ and then it’s like, “Really, if you give me a gun…”

“Underworld” was shot on a relatively modest budget of approximately $25 million. Because of the look that director Len Wiseman was going for, and the small budget, “Underworld” features a lot of practical rather than CGI effects. Michael Sheen who plays Lucian, the head of the werewolf clan, was involved in one of the film’s most interesting action sequences. “Michael Sheen is running along behind the car and he’s running so fast. [On the set] you see the guys literally hammering a long piece of carpet to the back of a car and he’s running on it. That’s so cool and it looks really incredible. But when they’re doing it while you’re actually there, it’s so low-tech.”

Kate Beckinsale admits she doesn’t like to see CGI people, though some action sequences are definitely improved with the CGI effects. “I think it was really important to see an actor doing it themselves. I know that at the very beginning [of ‘Underworld’] they said, ‘Don’t worry. If you really suck the stunt girl will do it, but these are the stunts we’d like to pull off showing that it’s you.’ And we did. We really didn’t have to use her for anything they had me do. I want to see the real person doing the action. That was what was so great about this - and the budget didn’t really allow for much.”

“Everyone is doing wirework and I do think this is the last year of wirework not being just incredibly old. I think in terms of what [‘Underworld’] is most like you hear kind of ‘The Crow’ and ‘The Matrix’ and ‘Interview with a Vampire’ all together. That’s not what this is as far as I’m concerned.”

If the prelease buzz is any indicator, then the studio should be in talks to turn “Underworld” into a franchise. Asked if she’d sign on for a sequel, Kate Beckinsale said, “Yes, if there’s a script that’s as good as the first one. It was a great experience.”

Fortunately for Kate, she’s got a full plate of projects lined up so any “Underworld” sequel would be awhile down the road. Besides her work as a gypsy princess in “Van Helsing,” she’s also playing Ava Gardner in the next Martin Scorsese movie, “Aviator,” with Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes. In “Aviator,” Beckinsale has a fair bit of screen time and gets to throw an ashtray. Asked if she believed Hughes and Gardner had an affair, Beckinsale responded, “Not really. They were kind of real good friends. It was kind of a blurry thing, but I don’t think they did. I think he would have liked to.”

ADDITIONAL "UNDERWORLD" INTERVIEWS:
Scott Speedman / Director Len Wiseman

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