10 Things You Didn’t Know About Kate Beckinsale

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9. Showbiz Family

Her parents were both actors. Her father was Richard Beckinsale, a famous British comedy actor, and her mother, Judy Loe, appeared in a number of British dramas and sitcoms.

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8. Tragic Loss

When Kate was five years old, her father – who was only 31 – died suddenly of a heart attack. His death left her deeply traumatized and she started expecting bad things to just happen.

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7. Tumultuous Adolescence

Kate’s teen years were pretty rough. Still dealing with the grief from losing her father, she had a nervous breakdown when she was a teenager and developed anorexia when she was 15 and weighed just 70 pounds at her lowest point. Afterwards, she underwent Freudian psychoanalysis for four years, attending five sessions a week. “It opened my eyes to things, not to be afraid of facing these fears,” she told People. “I at least understood what they were and where they had come from.”

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6. Not a Drinker

She doesn’t drink and she’s never tried drugs. One of the reasons that she doesn’t drink is because it makes her depressed. “Drinking just doesn’t make me feel well. I find wine very depressing. I get into a kind of despair the next day, like, ‘Oh, I must sit in the house and cry,’” she said.

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5. A Born Writer

During her teen years, she won the WH Smith Young Writers Award twice, once for her fiction writing and then for her poetry.

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4. Pet Peeve

Kate’s biggest pet peeve is when people are rude.

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3. Her One Vice

She’s been smoking since she was 16. She quit for three years after she became pregnant with her daughter Lily.

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2. She Never Felt Pretty

It wasn’t until she was 29 that she finally felt attractive. “I didn’t feel very attractive as a child, and actually I wasn’t. Feeling attractive didn’t come until I was 29 and with [my husband] Len [Wiseman],” she told Allure.

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1. The Ring

She was considered for a role in The Ring, but lost out to Naomi Watts because producers felt that Kate looked too young.

Cate

Cate has a B.A. and an M.A. in English Literature and has been the Managing Editor of Fame10 for more than 6 years. Despite having a love for the works of Thomas Hardy, Leo Tolstoy and Lord Byron, she also has an intense fascination with pop culture. When she isn’t writing for Fame10, she’s planning her next big adventure in Southeast Asia.