Kate Beckinsale: "The thing I was more concerned about was that my daughter was playing in Everybody’s Fine the young me, because all of us in the movie have flashbacks to when we were children. So they'd gone through this extensive casting process and found this little tiny person that looked Drew Barrymore and one like Sam, and he kept saying to me, 'Could Lily please audition?' And I said, 'No, over my dead body. Of course not. She can't possibly because if she doesn't get it she’s going to come to the set with me and then she's going to see the child that's playing the young me and she's going to make that face like Joan Crawford in the beginning of Baby Jane.' So I said no about ten times and then I think Lily overheard me saying no and was furious and said, 'Please can I audition?' I said, 'Well, no, because you've got to do an American accent and you're only eight' - or whatever she was at the time – 'and you sound like Margaret Rutherford anyway.' And it’s very difficult to do a convincing American accent. Believe me, I do it all the time and it’s very hard. And Lily went, 'I don’t care. I’ll do it, I’ll do it.' I said, 'All right, well how about you don’t go in and audition because it’s really scary? How about me and daddy video tape you?' And she said, 'All right, but only if you wear an eye mask and ear plugs.' I was like, 'Well that's not going to work, is it, you know, because you won't be able to see through the camera and everything.' So she goes, 'Well okay, I’ll audition.'"
"So we go in and there's like a hundred kids in there and she got it, amazingly enough. I was [pleased] because I thought it would be really awful for her if she didn’t, but she got it. And then we got to the set and I’m quite scared of Robert De Niro, obviously, because I used to have a picture of him on my fridge at college and that felt really weird. And Lily is sort of feeling a bit bummed out that it’s not somebody famous like George Clooney or SpongeBob SquarePants. So she’s totally not intimidated and has a great time and did really well. But I was much more concerned about how she was, and she was fine."
On Watching Her Daughter Play Her:
Kate Beckinsale: "Quite creepy and obviously on every psychological angle of your brain because it's, 'Is this okay? Is this weird? Is this okay? Is this going to turn out weird?' But she did well. I mean she did really well. I wouldn't want her to constantly have to play me in some kind of creepy cabaret."
On Her Daughter's Future as an Actress:
Kate Beckinsale: "She says no. She says she really enjoyed it and she’d much rather be a writer, thank you very much. But every time we do a movie, Len [Wiseman] will be talking about doing a movie with… He'll say, 'Maybe we’ll get Will Smith for this but if we don’t get Will Smith…' She's like, 'If you don’t get Will Smith, you know maybe you could make a character like a 10 year old girl. That would be fine.' John McClane as a 10 year old girl. And then of course there's me going, 'Well maybe you could make John McClane like a 35 year old woman.' He has a miserable experience."
On Who Lily Would Like to See Her Mom Work With:
Kate Beckinsale: "Lily, well, who would she like me to work with? She’s really retro so she’s kind of like, 'Oh I wish you could work with Joan Crawford or Janis Joplin.' I’m like, 'They're dead now. I totally get it, but it’s probably not going to happen.' So she’s into Marilyn Monroe and John Lennon and all these people, so I don’t know. Oh, who else does she like? I think it’s Janis Joplin, Joan Crawford and maybe Taylor Swift and then I'd be golden."
