Kate Beckinsale
Born: July 26 1973
Where: London, UK
Beckinsale is proving one of the big British success stories in Hollywood after top billing roles in Pearl Harbor and the romantic comedy Serendipity.
The Oxford-educated actress has also shown her versatility in roles ranging from a vampire in Underworld to an innocent heiress in The Golden Bowl.
The daughter of late Rising Damp and Porridge star, Richard Beckinsale and the actress Judy Loe, she was an award-winning young writer.
After overcoming teenage anorexia (for which she received counselling), she won a place at Oxford's New College only to drop out after two years to pursue acting.
She had already appeared in the TV series Devices and Desires, when she got her big screen break (while still at Oxford) in Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing.
She then attracted attention in America as the fiery Flora Poste in John Schlesinger's BBC film adaptation Cold Comfort Farm with Rufus Sewell.
Roles followed in Lewis Gilbert's chiller Haunted, the British comedy Shooting Fish with Stuart Townshend and the witty Whit Stillman hit The Last Days of Disco.
Next up was the drug trafficking prison drama Brokedown Palace and the Merchant-Ivory produced, The Golden Bowl, before she was catapulted into the big time.
The WWII blockbuster Pearl Harbor, which made Beckinsale a household name in the States, cast her opposite Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett as an army nurse who becomes involved in a love triangle with two pilots.
She then switched genres to romantic comedy for the light-hearted, Serendipity, opposite John Cusack.
2003 not only saw her star in vampire versus werwolves thriller, Underworld, Kate also met future husband (and director of the film) Len Wiseman.
She very nearly became typecast when she took on the role of a vampire hunter in Van Helsing, but her appearance in Laurel Canyon, with Frances McDormand and Christian Bale, was praised by the critics.
Recent roles have included Ava Gardner in The Aviator - a bio-pic of legendary moviemaker Howard Hughes, plus a sequel to Underworld is in the pipeline.
