Kate Beckinsale a film based on the Danish legend which inspired Shakespeare's "Hamlet", and starred in the murder mystery "Uncovered". In 1995, while studying in Paris, she filmed the French language "". Shortly after leaving Oxford University in 1995, Beckinsale starred in "Cold Comfort Farm" as Flora Poste, a newly orphaned 1930s socialite sent to live with distant family members in rural England. The John Schlesinger-directed film was an adaptation of Stella Gibbons's novel and also featured Joanna Lumley, Eileen Atkins, Ian McKellen, Rufus Sewell and Stephen Fry. Beckinsale was initially considered too young, but was cast after she wrote a pleading
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