Kate Beckinsale talks about her return as the tough vampire Selene in the new instalment Underworld: Blood Wars movie.
Underworld: Blood Wars follows Vampire death dealer, Selene (Beckinsale) as she fends off brutal attacks from both the Lycan clan and the Vampire faction that betrayed her. With her only allies, David (Theo James) and his father Thomas (Charles Dance), she must stop the eternal war between Lycans and Vampires, even if it means she has to make the ultimate sacrifice.
The fifth film in the series picks up the action where Underworld Awakening left off. The Lycans have found a powerful new leader in Marius (Tobias Menzies), who has injected a fanatical sense of purpose and discipline into their previously ragtag ranks. Marius will stop at nothing to track down Selene in order to learn the whereabouts of her daughter Eve, a Vampire-Lycan hybrid.
“Underworld is original, and given the fact that it also has a
female lead there are a lot of reasons I feel really privileged to be one of those few women who gets to do this kind of movie.”
—Kate Beckinsale.
Since 2003, Beckinsale has starred as the famous Selene in the Underworld film series. Not only did the movie gain a cult following, it also cemented the acceptance that a strong, female action star could successfully become a great heroine.
Blood Wars, however, may be the last in the series, which according to Beckinsale made this return extra special.
“It’s interesting to come back and play a character that you played before,” Beckinsale says. “I’m always dressed as Selene but the worlds have changed quite a lot for each movie. The first one we shot in Budapest and it looked sort of industrial and steam punk. Now, Blood Wars has a quite a medieval vibe to it. My outfit might stay the same but what the character’s going through and the world she’s moving through has been quite different each time. The reason I was interested in Blood Wars is that Selene goes through so much emotional stuff during the movie.”
This time around, Selene is running from all clans, which make the stakes much higher for the heroine. “There’s been this longstanding feud between Vampires and Lycans but in Blood Wars, Selene’s very much disenfranchised from both factions,” the actress explains. “She’s not really part of the team of vampires anymore and she’s on the run from everyone. Selene’s tough and incredibly inventive about killing monsters and all of that, but her motivation has always been love. In Blood Wars, it’s the love for her daughter Eve that keeps Selene going.”
In other words, expect a Beckinsale to take things to another level in terms of fight and action. “All sorts of horrible things happen to Selene but then she manages to dispatch everybody because she gets really pissed off,” she says. “It’s difficult these days to get a genre movie of this type made if it’s not based on an existing comic book or video game or something like that. Underworld is original, and given the fact that it also has a female lead there are a lot of reasons I feel really privileged to be one of those few women who gets to do this kind of movie. I think audiences like to see women taking names and kicking ass but I also think at this point, there’s a historical legacy element to Underworld that people find appealing.”
Underworld: Blood Wars opens in theatres on January 6, 2017.
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