Kate Beckinsale Reveals Michael Bay’s Negative Comments About Her Looks While They Promoted ‘Pearl Harbor’
Actress Kate Beckinsale has a busy year ahead of her. She currently stars in Whit Stillman’s latest film “Love and Friendship,” based on Jane Austen’s epistolary novel “Lady Susan”; her performance has received rapturous reviews from many critics. She’s also set to appear in the upcoming horror film “The Disappointments Room” and “Underworld: Blood Wars,” the fifth installment in the “Underworld” franchise. After 25 years in the film industry, Beckinsale has plenty of stories, and not all of them are so pleasant, including her time spent with director Michael Bay on “Pearl Harbor.” In a recent appearance on “The Graham Norton Show,” Beckinsale said that she thinks Bay was “baffled” by her because her “boobs weren’t bigger than [her] head” and that she “wasn’t blonde.”
Beckinsale continued by saying that she “didn’t fit the type of actress [Bay] had met before” and that he was much more concerned about her looks than her performance. “When we were promoting the film,” she said, “Michael was asked why he had chosen Ben [Affleck] and Josh [Hartnett], and he said, ‘I have worked with Ben before and I love him, and Josh is so manly and a wonderful actor.’ Then when he was asked about me, he’d say, ‘Kate wasn’t so attractive that she would alienate the female audience.'” Vanity Fair corroborated Beckinsale’s report when they uncovered a Movieline interview with Bay back in 2001, saying that he “didn’t want someone who was too beautiful” and that “women feel disturbed when they see someone’s too pretty.”
Michael Bay’s latest film was “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi,” which was released this past January to mixed reviews. “Love and Friendship” is in theaters now.
READ MORE: Michael Bay Explains Why He Didn’t Cast An A-List Star For ’13 Hours’
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