Kate's dark side

Skintight leather, bedraggled hair and a look that comes over as a cross between that girl in The Matrix and Edward Scissorhands ... but underneath it all is that most flawless of English roses, Kate Beckinsale.

For fans of Ms Beckinsale - voted last year the most beautiful woman in Britain by readers of Hello! magazine - this picture might come as a bit of a shock. Especially for those who have become accustomed to her playing such roles as the courageous-but-beautiful nurse in Pearl Harbor, or the manipulative-but-beautiful Miss Woodhouse in Emma, let alone the bossy-but-beautiful Flora Poste in Cold Comfort Farm.

But there comes a time in every young actress's career when she has to play a vampire. Here, she is pictured in Underworld, where she plays a lady vampire warrior called Selene. She is caught up in a war between the vampires (modern, aristocratic sophisticates - and, if Ms Beckinsale is anything to go by, rather gorgeous) and the Lycans (street-thuggish werewolves who prowl the city's underbelly).

She falls in love with one of the werewolves, played by Scott Speedman - making the movie a sort of Dracula meets Romeo and Juliet.

In real life, Ms Beckinsale's love life is even more complicated. One of her fellow vampires in the film is played by British actor Michael Sheen, the father of her four-year-old daughter Lily.

However, while making the movie Ms Beckinsale, 29, fell in love with the director, Len Wiseman, and in March this year she split up with Mr Sheen after a nine-year relationship.

Three months later it was announced that she was engaged to Mr Wiseman, who asked her to marry him at a Californian restaurant after booking the presidential suite at a Santa Monica hotel and filling it with lilies - her favourite flowers.

Ms Beckinsale would seem to have vampires on the brain. As well as Underworld, she recently finished filming Van Helsing, which pits the famous vampire hunter against Dracula, Frankenstein's monster and the Wolf Man.

Talking about Underworld, she said recently: "It's not the kind of movie I'm interested in normally, but the script is amazing. It's more kind of Interview With The Vampire meets The Matrix. Lots of leather pants!"