There are several reasons why I have long admired Kate Beckinsale. She’s a talented actress, who is capable of both excellent comic timing and subtle emotional response. She is, to state the obvious, extremely beautiful. She’s intelligent — she had started a degree at Oxford, studying French and Russian, before she dropped out after her third year to pursue her flourishing acting career. But, courtesy of the fan site KBeckinsale.net, I think I may just have found another reason to admire her:

The site doesn’t state what year this photo was taken, but I think it’s safe to assume she can’t have been more than 18. I honestly cannot imagine what you would have had to do to me when I was a teenager to persuade me to pose with my mother (that’s Kate’s mom, actress Judy Loe, on the right), in matching outfits as if we were both dancing. I truly think that there’s something admirable, not only about being able to do something so adorably dorky, but also to look really cheerful doing it. Mothers across the world must wish their teenage daughters would be as sulk-deficient as Kate.

Perhaps the cheerfulness has something to do with the fact that it was about this time that she captured her first big-screen role, featuring as the sweet, innocent Hero in Kenneth Branagh’s excellent film adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing. I was 12 the year the movie was released, in 1993, and when I set eyes on Kate, it was pretty much love at first sight:

Since then I’ve also grown fond of Emma Thompson, who costarred as Hero’s older and wiser cousin, Beatrice:

After Much Ado, Kate starred in a series of British period pieces: the hilarious rural comedy Cold Comfort Farm, the old-fashioned ghost story Haunted, and the BBC adaptation of Emma. Perhaps in order to try to force casting agents to consider her in more modern parts, she then hacked off her hair:

Which led to a role as the tomboyish Georgie in Brit comedy Shooting Fish, before she snagged her first Hollywood job opposite Chloe Sevigny in The Last Days of Disco:

She starred with Claire Danes in the drama Brokedown Palace, about two best friends imprisoned on a charge of drug smuggling in Thailand:

(A warning: you should be prepared to cry if you see this movie).

What came next, of course, was the part in Pearl Harbor that was to launch her as a bona fide Hollywood star. While I hope we can all agree that the film was ... not a masterpiece, the publicity for it did at least give us Kate in a soldier hat:

Then there was the Lisa Cholodenko–helmed Laurel Canyon, the indie that gave Kate her one slightly lesbianish role so far, as an uptight PhD student unexpectedly drawn towards her boyfriend’s bisexual mother, played by Frances McDormand:

And then there was ... well. This was about the time that the rest of the world was cottoning on to the wonderfulness of The Beckinsale. I know how many of you are fans of Selene in her black leather catsuit.

But I have to confess: I haven’t seen a Kate Beckinsale movie since Laurel Canyon. As sad as it was, my onetime favorite actress stopped making movies that interest me. I’m not an action movie or a horror movie or an Adam Sandler movie fan. And as much as I can understand her not wanting to be stuck in Jane Austen–style corsets forever, I can’t help wishing her Hollywood choices had involved a few more character-driven dramas.

Looks-wise, too, I miss the old Kate; the one who had straight black hair, and unabashedly pale skin, and who didn’t wear so much make-up that she started to look like a different person:

Am I totally wrong? Should I awake to the glories of Underworld? Do you prefer Old British Kate, or New Hollywood Kate? Give me your thoughts below.