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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Kate Thin-As-Rail

I was just shopping for food at my favorite overpriced grocery store (because it's conveniently located a block from where I live) when I saw Kate Beckinsale on the cover of Women's Health. She was all thin and pretty, which is great, I suppose, especially for a woman who is a year away from 40. I'm not sure if it's the way she is photographed or what she's wearing, but the cover is so jarring. While she has done skimpy before, I still impose a sophistication on her that she constantly plays down. I guess I'm a bit judgy and sad that she kind of has to whore herself out like this. After all, if she had another Kate's career like Winslet or Cate Blanchetts', for example, you know this would have never taken place. I thought she was fantastically bitchy in The Last Days of Disco, droll in The Aviator, and disgruntled in Laurel Canyon. Parker Posey can also play an awfully good bitch. Perhaps, there is only so much room in Hollywood for the Miranda Priestly type. Beckinsale has proven she can carry a popcorn thriller in the underrated Vacancy. Considering she made her feature film debut prestigiously as Hero in Much Ado About Nothing, it's unexpected that her career as of the last decade has mostly been comprised of action roles in real pissers. Her husband Len Wiseman (whom she left Michael Sheen--the father of her daughter--and relocated for while they filmed the first Underworld) directed her in two Underworld films and the upcoming, unnecessary Total Remakecall. She has tried to expand her commercial profile through being second-banana to Angelina Jolie in the ass-kicking department, and by hitching her star to Adam Sandler's Click. She has also fallen way short of Oscar in Nothing But the Truth and is giving it another go with The Trials of Cate McCall. Her representation in the press hasn't been the best. Along with leaving Sheen for another man (they do, however, maintain a friendship and she has emphasized more than once that he never asked her to marry him), Claire Danes (who doesn't come across as very warm herself) is on record as describing her as prickly and Michael Bay (one of my least favorite "artists" in Hollywood) rather harshly, publicly played down her looks when discussing Pearl Harbor. Not sure if this is a management issue, but it certainly hasn't helped her get better parts. She seems to be capable of so much more. But, it's not like she cries when she goes to the bank and she is Bikini Ready, so all is not lost, I guess.

[Photo via I'm Not Obsessed]

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