Kate Beckinsale keeps her cool in sub-zero temperatures filming Whiteout
LOS ANGELES — The freezing weather of Manitoba, Canada, doubled as the South Pole for the Kate Beckinsale film “Whiteout,” in theaters today.
At news conferences in Los Angeles, where it was ironically warmer than usual, Beckinsale said the weather gave the cast and crew something to bond over.
Gabriel Macht as Robert Pryce in Warner Bros. Pictures and Dark Castle Entertainment's action thriller "Whiteout," a Warner Bros. Pictures release.
“There’s something about it being so extreme … there’s something very bonding about it,” Beckinsale said. “It turned out to be a mutual point of contact where everybody could complain about it.”
Beckinsale plays U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko, stationed at the Amundsen-Scott base near the South Pole in Antarctica. She’s trying to track down a killer as six months of winter near at the station.
While the film couldn’t be shot in Antarctica, a frozen lake outside Gimli, Manitoba, doubled for the location. And temperatures there were below zero almost the entire time during filming.
Beckinsale said the level of cold outside Gimli was a shock to her system the first day of filming there.
“That very first day coming out of the trailer, I was worried that I wasn’t going to be able to speak at all, (or) say a line, ever,” she said. “Because my whole throat closed on that first breath.”
The South Pole was reconstructed on four feet of ice atop the lake.
“We really worked hard to make it feel like you were there,” producer Joel Silver said.
Kate Beckinsale as Carrie Stetko in Warner Bros. Pictures' and Dark Castle Entertainment's action thriller "Whiteout," a Warner Bros. Pictures release.
Beckinsale has done action before, in the “Underworld” series and in “Van Helsing.” But she said the cold made shooting the action sequences even more difficult.
“It was a lot more intense actually, because we were all worried we were going to die of hypothermia every other second,” she said. “It’s a woman in an extreme situation with
extreme weather.”
The film is based on the Oni Press graphic novel by Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber. Beckinsale said she’s not the comic-book reader of her family, but she respects the medium.
“I married a comic-book fan; I know what a comic-book fan is. So, I couldn’t say I was one. I used to get comics, but my husband … it’s a whole different world,” she said. “And my daughter’s into comic books. … They will go to the comic store together. I just can’t compete with their level of obsession. But I respect it, I marry it, and I live with it.”
Her husband, Len Wiseman, directed the first two of the three “Underworld” films. Rumors came out last month of a possible second trilogy, but Beckinsale denied she’d signed on.
“Three whole more?” she said. “I don’t think my daughter needs to see my bottom in rubber for another 10 years.”
By Matthew Price
From Friday’s The Oklahoman
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