KATE BECKINSALE FINDS BEING AN ACTION GIRL WEIRD

Kate Beckinsale who plays the warrior Selene in the Underworld series of films said she took the part to prove to herself that she could pull it off. “I was sort of frustrated at finding that every time I went for a movie where the character was a cop or something, they’d say, ‘Well she’s very soft and British… We sort of think of her more in a period movie.’”
But she never expected that it would go so far. Underworld: Awakening is the fourth in the series and the third movie starring Kate. “For me it was an experiment to see if anyone including myself would actually buy me doing this stuff. So the thought of it going on to two, three, or four films, was very much contingent on whether or not it worked. And I certainly didn’t think it would become one of the things that was most associated with me, because it was probably the movie I did that was the most far removed from myself.” 
She also feels that her role in Underworld changed her career. “I was, what, 28, when I did it?  And I’d been solidly working for a good ten years before that. Now all of a sudden you’re ‘action girl’. I had to fight so hard to actually be in Underworld. Then, suddenly, I was so bought as that character it was almost like the other stuff never happened. It did open up an awful lot of stuff to me that had not been available to me before, so I was very grateful for that. But it’s strange to become much more famous for something that’s so far away from your sensibility. It’s not bad. It’s just weird.”
Underworld: Awakening releases in India and worldwide in 3D on 20 January 2012.