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 "The Independent" felt that "the casting, including Michael Sheen's volcanic Kostya and Kate Beckinsale's steadily freezing Nina, is mainly spot-on." In early 1996, she starred in two further plays; "Sweetheart" at the Royal Court Theatre and "Clocks and Whistles" at the Bush Theatre. Beckinsale next starred in an ITV adaptation of Jane Austen's "Emma", playing Emma to Mark Strong's Mr Knightley and Samantha Morton's Harriet Smith. "You shouldn't necessarily like Emma," Beckinsale has said of her character. "You do love her, but in the way the family of a teenage girl could be exasperated by her outrageous behaviour and still