Why Kate Beckinsale is determined to face down cruel trolls who just won’t leave her alone

Kate Beckinsale doesn’t like people feeling sorry for her, and she’s usually quick to let that be known.

When fans raised concerns about her appearance this year, she accused them of “insidious bullying.”

“Every time I post something, I’m accused of having had unrecognizable surgery, of having Botox or fillers, or of being obsessed with looking younger,” the 51-year-old actress wrote online. “I don’t actually do those things.”

When a social media fan said she looked “a little thin” in May, she hit back: “The fact that you like girls who are heavier than me doesn’t factor into things that are important or relevant.”

And when she was seen in a wheelchair with an ice pack on her head last November, she insisted that she had absolutely not just had plastic surgery, but had simply gone to the dentist.

“I’m sorry that I set a bad example and didn’t allow myself to get an infection, not treat it, get sepsis and die,” she replied angrily.

Her Instagram profile – which has 5.6 million followers – is full of provocative photos of her in thigh-high dresses, lace underwear and skimpy swimwear, one of which bears the slogan in glitter ink: ‘I Did Not Ask Your Opinion’.

So it’s safe to assume she’ll be annoyed by the comments at her latest public appearance, a red carpet event in LA last week.

Dressed in a pink satin mini dress with corset and platform stilettos, she cut a striking figure. Yet there were again concerns about her weight and the topic of cosmetic surgery.

‘What does Hollywood have against aging gracefully?’ one fan asked.

Another said: ‘She was a bomb. I don’t even recognize her now.’

Despite living in Hollywood, the land of celebrity ‘tweakment’, British-born Kate has repeatedly denied having any cosmetic help since the 1990s.

She says a condition called mast cell activation syndrome means she “can’t take the risk” of such treatments because her body is prone to severe allergic reactions.

The only cosmetic treatment she admits to is platelet-rich plasma therapy (PRP), a so-called ‘blood facial’, in which plasma is extracted from the blood and injected into the skin.

But for those close to the actress, there are more pressing concerns than her appearance. For the star of the 2001 film Pearl Harbor and the Underworld vampire franchise, whose latest film, Canary Black, is No. 1 on Amazon Prime, has had her life torn apart again and again.

A year ago, Kate posted a quote from Sylvia Plath: “If I get through this year, no matter how bad, it will be the greatest victory I have ever had.”

A close contact of Kate said: ‘It has been a difficult time and continues to be a difficult time.

‘She’s been very open about it. She could hide and stay home, but she doesn’t want to. She likes to dress up and go out. She has a movie to promote.”

After losing her father, Richard Beckinsale, the star of Porridge and Rising Damp, in 1979 when she was just five, she lost another father figure this year: her stepfather – the man she called ‘My BFG, my Roy’ mentioned – who died of a stroke in January at the age of 87.

Roy Battersby, the director of TV greats such as Inspector Morse, Cracker and A Touch Of Frost, came into Kate’s life three years after her father’s death.

In a video for fans on Father’s Day, she said: ‘I’m down to two now. This is the first time since I was five and eight that I have no one to call today.”

Kate’s mother, actress Judy Loe, 77, has had health problems of her own and quietly battled stage four breast cancer for six years.

And Kate herself spent six weeks in hospital this year with a ruptured esophagus – which she says was ’caused by the stress of a whole year’. To add to her pain, her Persian cat, Clive, died last June at the age of 19, leaving her ‘totally broken’.

She then recently became embroiled in a legal battle with an LA spa owner, who accused her of owing £2,000 for massages – and whom she accused of sexual assault, an accusation he denies.

Born in Chiswick, West London, the only child of Judy and Richard, Kate has been in the spotlight all her life, making her film debut at the age of four in a cameo appearance in a 1977 episode of This is Your Life, dedicated to her father.

Richard died in his sleep two years later at the age of 31 from a heart attack caused by undiagnosed coronary artery disease.

Tragically, Kate’s mother was in hospital that same night, recovering from surgery to unblock her fallopian tubes so she could have more children.

When she came out, she learned that her operation had been a success, but that her husband had died.

Kate, who was cared for by a family friend who came to look after her at home, says she still suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder ‘from discovering my

the almost dead body of the young father as a very young child alone at night’ – a trauma ‘reactivated’ by the loss of Roy all those years later.

Every year on Richard’s birthday and the day he died, she posts a tribute on social media. She recently wrote, “I can’t remember what it feels like not to miss him. It’s a part of me, just like my blood.’

In 1983, her mother met Roy and Kate had five teenage step-siblings, which left her feeling ‘invaded’.

At the age of 11, she was in therapy. At 15, she started chain-smoking and developed anorexia – at her lowest point she weighed five stone.

Despite her unhappiness, Kate, who has an IQ of 152, excelled at her all-girls school in west London before getting a place at Oxford reading French and Russian literature.

At the end of her freshman year, she was cast in Kenneth Branagh’s film Much Ado About Nothing, playing the virginal hero alongside Emma Thompson and Keanu Reeves. It grossed £17 million, and Kate became a rising star.

While appearing on stage in Bath in The Seagull, she met Welsh actor Michael Sheen. They fell in love, moved to the US and Kate had a big hit with a starring role in Pearl Harbor. Their daughter Lily was born in 1999.

Her career flourished, but Kate struggled with sexism, including a ‘business’ meeting with disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein in which he opened his hotel room door in a bathrobe. Her relationship with Sheen also suffered. She was only 25 when she had Lily and thousands of miles away from family, it was a lonely time.

They separated in 2003. She subsequently married Underworld’s American director Len Wiseman and divorced nine years later.

Sheen, 55, found love with Swedish actress Anna Lundberg, 30, but Kate hasn’t settled despite a string of affairs with younger men.

She calls herself “goofy” and refuses to conform to the stereotype of an older woman in LA. On her 50th birthday last year, she arrived as a Playboy bunny.

In Canary Black, in which she plays a CIA agent, she is proud of doing her own stunts. “She was determined to do them herself,” says a friend. “She suffered very nasty injuries.”

Kate divides her time between LA and London, where she is inseparable from her mother. In a recent Instagram clip, they are seen strolling around a playground, where she films Judy as she plays hopscotch.

“If my mother taught me anything, it’s that when life throws something unexpected at you, keep smiling,” she said recently. “We have and will get through everything.”