Kate Beckinsale is over people claiming she’s “obsessed with looking younger.”
The actress, 50, shared a lengthy post via Instagram on Sunday, May 5, denying plastic surgery rumors that have apparently haunted her for decades. Beckinsale posted two videos of herself — one from a photo shoot she did in her 20s or 30s and one from a recent event — and wrote, “Whatever someone looks like, accusing them constantly of things they haven’t done, or being obsessed with youth when actually, currently I’m obsessed with surviving loss, is bullying. Please stop now.”
Beckinsale, who was recently hospitalized for an undisclosed health issue, called out the “vicious” bullying she’s endured due to plastic surgery rumors that allegedly continue to follow her.
“I hate talking about this because I hate adding to this conversation but I’m doing it because insidious bullying of any kind over time takes a toll,” she wrote in her post. “These videos might be 20 years apart — maybe more. Every time I post anything — and by the way, this has been the case since I was about 30 — I am accused of having had unrecognizable surgery / using Botox using fillers / being obsessed with looking younger, and it’s really such a tiresome and subtly vicious way to bully a person.”
The Underworld franchise star, who shares daughter Lily, 25, with ex Michael Sheen, went on to deny undergoing plastic surgery and claimed that she’s even had a surgeon “categorically state” that she hasn’t had any work done.
“And still, every time there’s a chorus of ‘My God, you’re unrecognizable. Oh my God PLASTIC, oh my God, you don’t even look like yourself anymore,’ it happens constantly and it’s usually women that are doing it,” Beckinsale continued. “Life happens — obviously I have aged, everybody ages.”
Kate asserted that she’s always been more concerned with living over aging after losing her father, British actor Richard Beckinsale, when she was 5 years old.
“I spent most of my teenage years and a good deal of my 20s absolutely crippled with severe anxiety and panic attacks that I was going to die of a heart attack too, and went to emergency rooms often, and was almost, at that time of my life, completely immobilized by that anxiety,” she wrote in her social media upload. “The fact that one of the major things I am bullied about is an assumption that I can’t handle the idea of getting older is so deeply ironic when my all-consuming terror was that I never thought I’d even see the end of my 20s.”
Kate, who has also been mourning the recent death of stepfather Roy Battersby, then detailed the videos she shared, explaining that her beauty routine has, of course, changed over the years.
“As you can see from these two videos, what is different is that I lived in the UK, and was paler,” she explained. “I used to pluck the s–t out of my eyebrows, I loved that brown lipstick that everybody wore. I had a fuller face, as most of us do in our late teens and 20s. Makeup techniques were matte, not nearly so glossy. I thought contours were something I found difficult in geography lessons.”
She concluded, “I’m posting this knowing full well that it will have absolutely no effect. It isn’t going to stop.”
Kate recently made her first red carpet appearance since her weeks-long hospitalization earlier this month. She wowed in an eye-catching, sheer white organza gown at the inaugural King’s Trust Gala in New York City on Thursday, May 2 — her long locks pulled back in a black bow save for delicate, face-framing layers.
On the carpet, she told People, “It’s been a rough year. Because my parents have both been unwell and my cat … it’s been a bunch of things. So that’s why it’s nice to come and see friends and have a little perspective. Everyone’s had a bit of a rough year, I think.”
