Best Actress 2013: Kate Beckinsale, The Trials of Cate McCall

What happened with Kate Beckinsale?  Too many Kates in the Hollywood kitchen?  Winslet, Cate Blanchett, Katherine Heigl?  (She probably wouldn't have fared much better than a Kristen, Jessica, or Jennifer)  She's talented.  She had a privileged film debut as Hero in Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing.  She worked with James Ivory and Whit Stillman.  She had a rom-com hit with Serendipity.  She had an even bigger commercial venture with Pearl Harbor, though things did not go well between her and director Michael Bay (he said he hired her because she wasn't "too beautiful," yet suggested she work out more during filming).  She was delightfully bitchy in The Last Days of Disco and her American accent was alarming good in Laurel Canyon.  The Underworld franchise helped developed a larger fanbase for her, though she continued failing to capitalize off big budget projects like Van Helsing and Click, which didn't do terribly at the box-office.  And, when she headlined films that weren't that different quality-wise, they did quite badly.  Lately, she's been taking the love/hate interest role in such films as Contraband and the Total Recall remake.  She had a baity role as a reporter who must protect her source with Nothing But the Truth a few years ago, and has a similar-sounding part in this year's The Trials of Cate McCall, where she plays a lawyer in recovery who must defend a woman on appeal wrongly convicted of murder.  Filmed in the L.A. area and South Carolina last summer on a budget of $7M.  Karen Moncrieff (The Dead Girl) wrote, directed and coproduced Trials.

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