Hollywood's idea of making Kate Beckinsale ugly is having her dress in baggy sweats and wear no makeup. Excuse me, but we still know what kind of body she has on under that, and losing the makeup is no hindrance. Snow Angels is one of those indie films where actors get to be all depressed and "normal," in between massive hits like Underworld. It's often easier to talk to big stars when their little passion projects need love, hence a fun opportunity to shoot the breeze with a dream girl, despite the downer movie.
Kate Beckinsale: You guys got a stuffy ass room in here.
CraveOnline: We had maintenance come to fix the AC.
Kate Beckinsale: Have you been in here a really long time?
CraveOnline: 20 minutes or so. It's actually improved since they fixed it.
Kate Beckinsale: Did they? Sweaty, messy, I'm so sorry.
CraveOnline: Do you think about jumping for a role that's not glamorous?
Kate Beckinsale: Well, not so much. I think if I like the script, I like the script. Especially in a movie like this. It is nice to have the first thing about the character not be "She's hot. Her butt looks cute." That's makes a nice, refreshing change.
CraveOnline: Was it a tough role because you have a daughter yourself and bad things happen to the little girl?
Kate Beckinsale: Yeah, it really was. I actually took my daughter with me to Nova Scotia and my husband and my other husband and all the husbands that I've ever had came. It was really nice because it was tough on all of us. Emotionally, we went to some tough places but I knew I'd get to go home and get into bed with my kid and squeeze her face. I would have had a heart attack if I'd had to come home to an empty room like [director] David [Gordon Green]. Empty of a child, not empty of all the women [joking.]
CraveOnline: Did you have any fun on the set?
Kate Beckinsale: He picked a lot of people who were capable of having a good laugh. That really helped, don't you think? There's going to be a killer fart on the DVD. [The little girl farted while laying in bed with Kate.] It was like a bass tone, like a man's fart. I thought it was David. I couldn't understand why I could feel it reverberating down my leg. He was on the other side of the room, it was a split second.
CraveOnline: Did the girl admit it?
Kate Beckinsale: With glee. It was a good one.
CraveOnline: Would costars like Amy Sedaris go back into comedy mode between takes?
Kate Beckinsale: I mean, the thing was there was this great complete freedom on the set. I think we all got very used to the fact that David is almost as delighted when you try something and fail as he is when you try something and it goes really great. So there were some hilarious times in really, really, incredibly serious scenes like looking for my lost daughter. Amy would say something so hilarious and in the spirit of really, she wasn't messing around. She was just trying to give us eight, nine, 10 options. The "Oh dear" was the best. There was a terrible, tragic sort of dead deer and the camera came tracking past it and Amy stops and goes, "Oh, dear." But she was great and she just has a fantastic spirit. I felt like everybody fit really well. There's a bunch of very different people and I felt like she wanted to do as good of a job as she possibly could, and that's what everybody else wanted. Everybody had a good go. I thought she was just the same. She was funnier than us.
CraveOnline: How do you describe your character?
Kate Beckinsale: She's a woman who is I think in the beginning just drowning in her responsibilities. She's got a job that's not fulfilling, she's solely responsible physically, financially for a child. She has a husband who she's separated from who is kind of like another child almost and not responsible. She's kind of responsible for her mother and I think she's very oppressed by her life and feels like she was going to get more out of it than she did and disappointed and struggling. Because she's busy and overwhelmed, her life's kind of like a treadmill that she can't get off. She makes certain choices because she's so consumed in the just next thing all the time. Then finds herself on a really tough journey, things that are happening to her that are going to spoil everything. I think she's a single mother and I've been a single mother and been under the same pressures that she's been under. It's a very common feeling of loneliness and pressure and responsibility that a lot of people I think feel. It's just that Annie's circumstances ramp up.
CraveOnline: A very different sort of winter movie, how was your experience on Whiteout?
Kate Beckinsale: As far from this as it's possible to be, really. I was a federal marshal in a chic fur hat. That's a Joel Silver movie. You guys are not that similar. You look alike but you're actually not. Yeah, there's not an opportunity to go as deeply into a character because the character is a cartoon, a comic book. The movie feels much more on those kind of levels that it's much more external than internal. It's a different kind of experience.
CraveOnline: What about referring to the graphic novel?
Kate Beckinsale: I'm a big reader so I'm very happy with the written word. I'm an academic geek who likes reading a lot so I love a book. But again, graphic novels, it's nice to have extra resources to play with. Every time you can get your hands on anything that gives you a bit more clue about what you're supposed to do, I don't think actors ever really should know exactly what they're doing.
CraveOnline: What's going on with Whit Stillman? You were in his last movie.
Kate Beckinsale: I heard he's been spotted in Paris and I think he moved to Paris. I saw him a couple years ago and I think he was talking about making another movie. So that's as far as I know. Yeah, he was. He wrote a movie. He wrote a movie and I don't know if it's gotten made yet, but he's a mysterious cat. He's a great filmmaker. I had an amazing experience with him but he's definitely a mysterious guy so I don't know.
CraveOnline: What are your characters in Winged Creatures and Nothing But the Truth?
Kate Beckinsale: In Winged Creatures I play a single mother who's a waitress in a diner who witnesses a random shooting murder and becomes affected with post traumatic stress and starts harming her baby. Another light comedy. Then Nothing But the Truth, I play a journalist who exposes somebody she knows as a covert CIA operative and is taken to the grand jury to reveal the source and won't, goes to jail. It's not Judith Miller. It sounds like Judith Miller but it's not actually Judith Miller. Kind of a little bit like that.
CraveOnline: What is it like working with Rod Lurie?
Kate Beckinsale: Amazing. I've been so lucky. I've played with such great directors this year. I don't know what horoscope that came under. Rod is great, fantastic. He's similar to David in that he's not like you are which is so utterly not possessive about his stuff because he writes his scripts also. That makes you so amazingly respectful of his vision because he is so generous and so wants you to personalize it and color it in. It's such a treat. A great, great experience.
CraveOnline: The producer of Underworld says there's room for more sequels after this prequel.
Kate Beckinsale: Oh, did they? That's the first I've heard of it.
CraveOnline: Would you be up for it?
Kate Beckinsale: I think what I'd really like, just for women in general, is I'd like to do a Bruce Willis and get to 50 and then do that, but I don't think anyone wants to see my 50-year-old ass. We'll see.
CraveOnline: Do you have a cameo in the prequel?
Kate Beckinsale: They're shooting it right now. It's in New Zealand so probably not, but it's a family movie. My daughter's dad is the lead and my husband's producing it so I feel like we've got the family franchise going.
CraveOnline: That's very un-Hollywood. How do you stay on such good terms with your exes?
Kate Beckinsale: Just being incredibly groovy. No, I think because I pick great guys. I love Michael [Sheen]. Michael's fantastic. It shouldn't necessarily have gone on and on forever with us but he is one of my absolutely favorite people ever. I think we both felt that it was really important for Lilly, our daughter, to have everybody coming from the same place. He loves her and I love her and Len loves her. Everyone's nice. The guys both get along. I do feel like that's my major achievement of the last decade that my daughter is totally unscathed and great. I am proud of that.
CraveOnline: Sort of the theme of Snow Angels, is it inevitable that relationships fail?
Kate Beckinsale: We're way less depressing than you think.
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