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Beckinsale enjoys the complexity, intimacy of smaller film
Kate Beckinsale
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Published: September 18, 2008
Kate Beckinsale has starred in big-budget Hollywood movies, including Pearl Harbor and The Aviator, and fought monsters in such films as Underworld and Van Helsing. After all that, Snow Angels, out this week on DVD, was a nice departure, she said, allowing her to play an ordinary person in a small-budget drama.
Snow Angels is based on the Stewart O'Nan novel and adapted for the screen by David Gordon Green (an alumnus of the UNC School of the Arts), who also directed it.
"I was interested in doing a movie where somebody is a good person, a good-hearted person, behaving imperfectly," she said.
Beckinsale knows firsthand the pressure of being a single mom, so the character was easy to slip into, she says.
"One of the things I thought was interesting about Annie as a character was that she's in a situation a lot of people are in," Beckinsale recalled. "She's overwhelmed by her life. As a single mother, (Annie) has extraordinary responsibility and she's feeling the weight of that very heavily. I've been a single mother, and while I've not been under the same pressure she's under, there's a very common feeling of loneliness and responsibility."
Beckinsale, 34, was eager to work with Green, who previously wrote and directed the critically acclaimed George Washington, Undertow and All the Real Girls.
Both Beckinsale and Rockwell turned to O'Nan's novel to fill out the details of their characters. Reading about the ex-couple's long and rocky relationship helped inform their performances.
"We really wanted to create a sense for ourselves of our history and our whole relationship," she said.
Beckinsale was pleased that Green gave his actors the freedom to improvise.
"I find the best writer-directors are usually not precious and wedded to their script," she said.
During the five-week shoot in chilly Canada, she and Rockwell were so absorbed in their characters that they almost disappeared into them.
"There was a moment where I thought Sam and I may actually kill each other," she said with a laugh. "It was very magical and we felt like we were those people."
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