Kate Beckinsale

With actors for parents, this British brunette had performing in her DNA. After tackling a handful of roles on the BBC, Beckinsale made an auspicious film debut as an ingénue in the 1993 adaptation of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. During the 1990s, Beckinsale appeared in numerous stage-and-screen projects in her homeland, then crossed the ocean to play an American in the Manhattan-set 1998 film The Last Days of Disco. When Charlize Theron dropped out of 2001's Pearl Harbor, Beckinsale snagged her first big Hollywood role as the film's female lead. Her sexy turn as a vinyl-clad vampire in the surprise 2003 box-office smash Underworld (and its sequels) earned her legions of male fans as well as a husband, director Len Wiseman (even though she was dating her longtime boyfriend and Underworld costar, Michael Sheen, as production on the first film began). Throughout her career, Beckinsale has denied a variety of rumors, including having plastic surgery (she claims to have had none, and said she fears the rumors make her appear "shallow"); requesting a body double in the 2009 film Whiteout (the studio producing the film said body doubles are often hired as a standard practice and it was not done to fulfill Beckinsale's demand); and being fired from a remake of Barbarella (she won a 2009 lawsuit against a British tabloid that made such a claim). Aside from acting, Beckinsale has modeled in some 2009 Absolut vodka ads, and she has said that she wants to write a novel one day (back in high school, she won writing awards, and in college she studied French and Russian literature). ~ Rovi