Everybody's Fine
Quotes
"We went to a Gwen Stefani concert, and now she wants to wear red lipstick!" Kate Beckinsale has said of prettily precocious daughter Lily, 7, who joined mom for a mani-pedi in Santa Monica, CA, on March 27.
"The best part is that Adam makes people feel comfortable. In fact, my daughter has decided that he's a relative. But still, no one in the Sandler family invited me to Hanukkah."
Kate's four-year-old daughter Lily, from her previous relationship with Welsh actor Michael Sheen, is believed to have chosen her dress. Lily will also play a key role in the ceremony - throwing rose petals down the aisle before the bride.
Beckinsale, Sheen, and daughter Lily, two, will settle in London eventually. "We'll come back when it's time for Lily to go to school - she can't have an American accent!" she said.
Do you think your father (the late Porridge star Richard Beckinsale) watches over you? (Kate) Yeah, I do feel his presence a lot. I very much feel I've got a kind of protector and I assume it's him. There have been a lot of times where I've had something really significant happen to me and I turn on the TV and there he is. When I had my daughter Lily two years ago, I gave birth on a Sunday morning and somebody by me said: "You'll never believe it, they just put your dad's show on the TV." So he always just appears.
But the most surprising fact about 27-year-old Kate's appearance in the epic movie is that she kept her baby daughter with her throughout the gruelling six-month shoot in Hawaii. "Having Lily with me was so important," she says. Lily, now two, Kate's daughter by actor boyfriend Michael Sheen, left her mother's arms only when she was actually filming, so the little girl often had to be shielded from the full horror of the wartime special effects. "The hard thing was when we did the hospital scenes, and they had literally hundreds of grisly men walking around," says Kate. "I didn't want her to see that...I'd pull her hat down over her eyes."
Beckinsale, who grew up in Chiswick and went to private Godolphin and Latymer School, has enrolled daughter Lily, six, in a prep school. "It's important that she grows up in my culture," she has said. "I don't want her constantly taken out of school, sitting in a trailer and becoming a Hollywood child."
Today, Sheen seems as relaxed as he is guileless. He has a new girlfriend, 27-year-old dancer Lorraine Stewart ('it's been about six months but it's going well'), although the two do not live together. Partly, this is because he spends half the year in Los Angeles, where Beckinsale and Lily live, and were Sheen rents a flat. "My daughter lives out there, and I go over as often as I can," he explains. "So me and Kate and Len spend a lot of time together now. We're very grown up about it. We have to be for Lily's sake."
Beckinsale is protective of her daughter. "We had something recently when there were about 16 people in front of us taking pictures and Lily was enjoying the chance to legitimately shout at some grownups because normally she's not allowed. But even when she shouted they didn't stop. I find that shocking."
(Michael) "I think Lily is a real mixture of me and Kate. Everyone says that facially she looks like me, and she's also quite wicked. She definitely has Kate's wicked sense of humour."
To be close to Lily, Sheen has decided to live 10 minutes away from Beckinsale in Santa Monica, a place he also likes because its closeness to the sea reminds him of his childhood in Port Talbot.
(Michael) 'No matter how much you have loved another person, you've never felt the way you do about your child,' he says. He'd begun the interview by talking rather stiffly about his acting philosophy, sitting very still and fiddling with a ring he wears on his right hand, but as he talks about his daughter, Sheen's mood relaxes and he suddenly becomes animated. His voice - Welsh accent firmly and committedly intact - is wildly resonant. 'You have an overwhelming emotion in your life that is totally uncomplicated and totally unconditional.
(Michael) She's the funniest person I know. We landed at Heathrow recently and Kate handed over Lily's passport to the relevant person who said, "You've travelled a lot for a little person." She looked straight at him and announced: "I'm an international spy." ' Anecdotal mode suits Sheen - he's happier telling stories than talking about himself.
(Kate) And she wants a decent education for Lily. She has hardly been separated from her daughter since birth - Lily is still young enough to accompany her on film sets, where she's apt to steal the limelight - and is determined that she will go to school in London, not California.
"I'd like Lily to go to the school I went to, Godolphin and Latymer (the upmarket girls school in Hammersmith).
She already has some Americanisms: she says 'pants' instead of trousers and 'elevator' instead of lift. That's more than enough for me."
(Actually, the other day, Lily also said: "Buggerof fandmindyourownbusiness," she admits fondly, but at least that sounded reassuringly British.) Education is clearly very important to Beckinsale.
Kate would be seen buried deep in conversation with Affleck - or playing with her three-year-old daughter Lily, who accompanied her on set. (Pearl Harbor)
Once, during filming of a grim hospital scene, little Lily had cast and crew in hysterics as she ran around the beds with a pair of angel wings strapped to her flapping arms, trying to fly. (Pearl Harbor set)
Kate Beckinsale's publicist, Leslie Sloane Zelnik, told her that Amanda Bynes was also a client of hers and that she could introduce them. "Lily would love that," Kate said.
Kate in an interview with 'Allure' Magazine:
"Lily's father is still a huge part of her life, and mine wasn't because of his death.
So that's kind of different. I was much more messed-up little kid than she is. That is a
main source of amazing joy to me, that I have managed to raise a kid who seems to be truly
happy. I was already a total nightmare by the time I was seven. Lily goes to a school for
gifted children, which sticks in my throat slightly, because I've always thought that
parents who send their kids to school for gifted children most be assholes. But she's a smart
cookie. She can work her iPod better that I can work mine. Her favorite singer right now
is Gwen Stafani. But she's also completely into Queen. I think that's a sign that she's
being raised right. She's got good taste, my kid."
"Just wait untill she's a teenager," I tell her.
"That's Len's job," she replies. "I'm going to a spa for five years at that point."
After the first take Lily did when filming 'Underworld: Evolution' everyone clapped. Len then told her to do it again and Lily said: "Uhm, daddy, I already did that."
Kate Beckinsale's daughter, Lily, 8, has developed quite a keen eye for zoning in on
Botox-ed women around Hollywood, often calling them out in public and comparing them
to the equally stretched-out "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."
"This is what's sick about living in L.A. My eight-year-old daughter will point to a
woman and say, 'Look! That woman's had too much Botox.' She spots them because they
all look a bit like Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter."
Did Lily enjoy visiting you on the set [of Van Helsing]?
I thought she’d think it was really fun, seeing mommy flying but she got really irritated, like, ‘When’s it my turn?”
And she hung out with too many stunt men and started saying things like, “Mommy, can I be shot out of a cannon when I’m six?”
I thought, ‘Okay, I’m going to have to do a really earnest Merchant Ivory movie next.’
Lily thinks her [mom's] appearance has changed since moving to America.
She said: "Lily says, 'Mummy, you're a princess. Why do you look like J-Lo all the time?'
"And I say 'For one, I'm upset that you know who J-Lo is, and number two, what are you talking about?'"
"My daughter Lily is 4-and-a-half and we're watching TV and she sees advertisements of the movie [Underworld] and asks why Daddy is trying to stab Mommy through the roof of a moving car," says the British actress, who just turned 30. "And then she asks why Daddy is covered in strawberry jam."
Kate Beckinsale faces an embarrassing, grand shopping trip with her 5-year-old daughter Lily after refusing to let her attend the Oscars parties with her on Sunday night. The British actress made a pact with her daughter to get her dressed up for a day out as a treat for ruining her Oscars dreams -- after little Lily planned for weeks to hit the post-show parties. Beckinsale says, "She was bummed that she couldn't come with us. She wanted to get dressed up and come out. "So, if you ever see us out in Santa Monica maybe at Whole Foods all dressed up with a 5-year-old decked out in a dress, it's because of that. We owe her one."
Daughter Lily doesn't like to watch Kate's movies.
“She won’t watch any of them, not any! We tried it actually - we were on holiday and ‘Van Helsing’ was on pay-per-view and Lily was like,
‘No, no, no!’ She likes ‘Some Like It Hot’ - that’s her favorite movie.”
“I miss the time Lily was completely dependant on me and I was with her all the time. She was so precious to me and I loved holding her in my arms all the time. Now, when she’s not on the set with me, I worry about her.”
“My priority is my daughter and acting takes a back seat to that. I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of leaving my daughter to a babysitter when it comes to picking her up from school or being there to put her to bed at night.”
"If going to a premiere means missing Lily's bath time, I won't miss bath time. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to present at the Golden Globes, come home, whipped the dress off and read to my daughter wearing gazillion-dollar earrings. That's how it goes in my house, and I wouldn't have it any other way."
"The other night my daughter said, 'I'm so lucky I've got two lovely daddies - I wish your daddy was still alive. (Kate's father, actor Richard Beckinsale, passed away when she was 5.) Then she gave me a little hand squeeze. I thought, 'You're eight!' I was so fantastically moved."