Actress Kate Beckinsale shares how she balances family and work, her love of reading, and what it’s like to work with her husband, director Len Wiseman.
The ‘Underworld: Awakening’ actress tells Parade Magazine:
On life with a teenage daughter (Lily Sheen, 13). “I’m literally a couple months into that. It has been largely about Bar Mitzvahs lately! I had a child young enough that it doesn’t feel too far away from my own experience. I feel like I flunked at adolescence really badly. I found it really difficult. I’m very supportive of how tricky seventh and eighth grade are for girls. I think it’s a very difficult time, but she’s doing great.”
On balancing work and motherhood. “It’s a constant juggle. It tends to be one extreme to another. I guess that’s how I’ve managed it all this time. I’ll do a crazy blast of working and then I’ll be home for a bit. It’s tricky and something that I don’t think I’d be able to pull off without having my parents come out and help out. I do feel that family is very important and I’m lucky enough that my parents are very happy to come and stay with us for a couple months. I think the thing that you miss out on is some extra hours of sleep, which would be really welcomed, but that tends to fall behind! “
On her on-set relationship with husband, director Len Wiseman. “The fist time we met each other was when we were filming Underworld, and then we worked together again after we’d been married a short while, and now we’ve been married seven years, so I’ve had quite a few different experiences along the way. It’s different each time. We love it. I think one of the things we like least about our jobs is that it can force separation from each other. One of the things that’s so nice about working together is that not only do we enjoy each other professionally, but we actually get to sleep in the same bed at night and hang out with our kid on the weekends, so it’s great. As far as any secrets I have to working together? I guess always argue over text so other people aren’t embarrassed!”
On her love of reading. “I grew up as an only child and my mother was also an only child, so we were both very passionate about reading. I think I passed that on to my daughter, who went plowing through Harry Potter and every other book possible! I just think especially in this day and age when you’re constantly fighting the pull of the Internet and television, there’s something about reading that is an active thing for children to do. It opens up their world completely and improves their vocabulary and they can use their imagination. I’m quite old fashioned about things like that, and I really do believe it’s terribly important.”
She’s a fan of The Hunger Games. “Oh yea! Actually, my daughter’s school encouraged all the parents and teachers and students to read The Hunger Games, so it promoted a massive discussion of it. For some reason, my daughter was a little bit resistant to it at first, but then we just were all completely overwhelmed by it. It was actually this summer that we were all reading it and loving it. We can’t wait for the movie. It looks fantastic.”
Photos by Wenn.com
