Kate Beckinsale on the cover of Allure. (Norman Jean Roy/Allure)If you had to choose a new challenge to deal with in life, the ramifications of being named the sexiest woman alive sounds like a good one … and happens to be the exact problem actress Kate Beckinsale has faced since the title was bestowed upon her by Esquire magazine in 2009.
"I think the risk of being the sexiest woman alive is that you don't want to ever have sex again," she tells Allure. "You don't want to wear a bikini again. You want to wear some nice overalls and a trucker's hat."
Whether or not she's over those hang-ups remains to be seen, but there's another issue the British beauty is dealing with these days: the public's perception of a 38-year-old mom of a teenager … a real-life role Beckinsale just happens to have.
"It's more of the thing of being embarrassing to somebody. I haven't been embarrassing before. I can't dance at a party where there are teenagers without clearing the dance floor," she confesses in the magazine's August issue. "Those are the things that make me go, F***, I'm old … you're a parent, everyone leaves."
(Norman Jean Roy/Allure)
Norman Jean Roy/Allure
It may be hard to believe, but Beckinsale is indeed the parent of a teenager, 13-year-old Lily, the daughter she had with fellow actor Michael Sheen. The couple's relationship ended in 2003 after eight years together.
[Related: Kate Beckinsale discusses her daughter's obsession with 'Twilight']
Since 2004, Beckinsale has been married to director and producer Len Wiseman, whom she met on the set of the 2003 thriller "Underworld" and credits with helping her finally feel beautiful. "Feeling attractive didn't come until I was 29 and with Len … At the time it was partly perceived as if I'd gone all Hollywood, but it wasn't like that at all," she explains. "It was just OK for me to walk around and feel feminine and attractive. I like feeling liberated like this."
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Norman Jean Roy/Allure
And at the ripe old age of 38, Beckinsale indeed feels like she's doing a decent job of keeping it together. "I haven't experienced a full facial collapse, I haven't suddenly gained 20 pounds that won't go away, or a beard," she jokes in the interview. "That probably will happen, but it hasn't yet."
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With the clock ticking until that beard and extra 20 pounds show up, she's been on the fast-track to returning to a blockbuster action-movie career, appearing earlier this year in "Contraband" alongside Mark Wahlberg, the sequel to "Underworld: Awakening" (which her husband produced), and will star in the upcoming "Total Recall" remake (which Wiseman is directing), playing the protagonist's murderous wife. It's a role that might have its benefits when teenage boys start calling on her daughter Lily.
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"I remember Len talking to Bruce Willis when Len did 'Live Free or Die Hard,' and I think Bruce did some terrifying things when his daughter started having a boyfriend. Len and I asked him, 'When Lily starts having boyfriends, will you come over, too? We'll all stand on the doorstep, scare the s*** out of them,'" she recalls. "But maybe now I don't need Bruce. Now that I'm a villain, I can go solo."
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