Cold Comfort Farm (film) Cold Comfort Farm (film) Cold Comfort Farm is a 1995 British comedy film directed by John Schlesinger and produced by the BBC and Thames Television, an adaptation of Stella Gibbons' 1932 book of the same name, the film stars Kate Beckinsale, Joanna Lumley, Ian McKellen and Rufus Sewell. Originally broadcast on 1 January 1995 on the BBC, it was Schlesinger's final film shot in his home country of Britain, and was picked up for theatrical release in North America through Gramercy Pictures, where it was a small success. After the death of her estranged parents, young Flora Poste, who aspires
Kate Beckinsale things to happen." Her widowed mother moved in with director Roy Battersby when Beckinsale was nine and she was brought up alongside his four sons and daughter. She has a close relationship with her step-father, who was a member of the Workers Revolutionary Party during her childhood. Beckinsale helped to sell "The News Line", a Trotskyist newspaper, as a child and has said the household phone was tapped following Battersby's blacklisting by the BBC. Family friends included Ken Loach and Vanessa Redgrave. Beckinsale was educated at Godolphin and Latymer School, an independent school for girls in Hammersmith, West London and