| By Fred Topel
In Theaters June 23
|
Adam Sandler always gets a hot girl in his movies. Whether it’s Drew Barrymore, Winona Ryder, Marisa Tomei or some girl they found at a Saturday Night Live casting call, Sandler is one lucky actor. His costar in Click is the lovely Kate Beckinsdale, she of leather clad curves in the Underworld movies.
Known more for her period pieces or action romps, Beckinsale appreciated getting back to her comedic roots. “It was a big coming home for me,” she said. “Actually for me it was kind of a personal thing because I think my father had been, in England, a very well known comedy actor. And I think I was very attracted to that because I had grown up on it, but I think I also slightly tried to steer clear of it. I didn’t want to tread on anyone else’s patch. I kind of wanted to be on my own patch. And then on this movie I actually turned a year older than my father got to, and it was a very liberating moment finding myself. I made it to 32 and I’m in a comedy and everyone’s being really nice, and I wasn’t away from the family because we shot in L.A. and my daughter was around. And it was just like a blissful and lovely sort of blossoming moment for me.”
When Michael (Sandler) gets a universal remote that controls his life, he often skips through his fights with wife Donna (Beckinsale). This leads to problems because he’s never able to fix the issues they fight about. Despite their onscreen bickering, this movie marriage was happy behind the scenes.
“I thoroughly enjoyed it. I didn’t have to take him home, I didn’t have to yell at him about going and playing golf or all of that stuff that would probably really bug me in real life if I was married to him. I had the sort of total movie pleasure of everything apart from anything leaking or gross or leaving me on my own or any of that. See, it was perfect. It was a blissful marriage and I was really kind of sad when it was over. “
Keeping her kids from hearing some of Sandler’s more adult material was another story. “I couldn’t figure out what’s going wrong because she kept saying to me, what was it, I had never even heard the whole thing, ‘They’re all gonna laugh at you.’ What is that?”
Ultimately, the remote fast forwards Michael to the end of his life, and along the way we see both Sandler and Beckinsale turn into an older, albeit still attractive, couple. “At some point everybody turns into their mother or their father. It’s just not normally from morning to afternoon. And it gives you a moment of totally existential panic because you sit there for six whole hours and it’s kind of boring and goes on and on and on, and then at the end of it you look so much worse and more creepy than you did when you went in. They modeled my hairstyle on the hairstyle my mother wore at my wedding so the whole thing was just kind of spooky.”
In the film’s younger time periods, Beckinsale sports some revealing sleepwear, because most of the couple’s arguments happen before bed. The extremely short shorts and spaghetti strapped tank tops were totally comfortable to the actress.
“Thank you for noticing,” she winked. “It’s actually pretty good. I tend to stay in something that if I had to come leaping out of bed to protect my children, doesn’t have like a wide open gusset or anything like that. I don’t sleep naked anymore just in case there’s a crisis.”
The British Beckinsale now lives in Los Angeles with her director husband Len Weisman. However, she’s still adjusting to American life and has not yet gotten even a driver’s license. “I mastered a golf cart on the Sony lot which is about as far as I got. I went to Nova Scotia, I’ve been really busy. I did an independent film called Snow Angels with David Gordon Green and Sam Rockwell. In Halifax, it was cold. Too cold to drive, I told myself. I actually got that very intimidating book of road signs. I never feel more foreign than talking about driving and I’m dealing with children’s schools. That’s when I just feel like I just stepped out of Fawlty Towers.”
One of her Click costars, Sean Astin, tried to give Beckinsale some driving tips. “He taught me for a second, for a night but I don’t want to unleash myself on Los Angeles after one night’s lesson. I don't think that would be wise for anybody. I don't know how it works here. In England they’ve got that system where the other people have got a pedal so they can stop you. Do they have that here? Everybody seems to draw a blank on that. You guys have driver’s ed that just seems to happen. I’m so elderly compared to everybody else.”
Luckily, Beckinsale speaks a little Russian, which makes taking taxis easier. “I actually used it last week in the back of a taxi to great effect. I’m quite phobic of taxis. I had a bit of a bad experience in a taxi once here. If they’re Russian, I tend to obsequiously speak as much Russian as possible, impress them so that they don’t kill me.”
Click opens June 23. |
