What our 'pearl' Katy did next

At the Pearl Harbor premiere party, one of the film's bigger names confides that Kate Beckinsale "thinks no one likes her in the movie".

In fact, she's one of the best things in a bad film.

It seems odd that the thoroughly poised 27-year-old would require reassurance, but that's Hollywood for you. No amount of ego-massaging is ever enough. And yet, how typically English of Beckinsale to be so self-deprecating.

Kate Beckinsale used to be "merely" a highly accomplished, intelligent (Oxford-educated) English actor with a superb knack for American accents, a very pretty face and a famous dad (Richard Beckinsale, who died when she was five). The new and divine Miss Beckinsale is much more of a heavenly creature. She is stunning: slim but not skinny in a delicate white peasant shirt, jeans and precariously-high cork platform mules. Made up to appear as if she's wearing nothing much but a slick of lilac eye shadow, and with copper-highlighted hair intricately piled up on her head, she looks every bit the Hollywood starlet she's about to become.

"It's a bit like getting married," she laughs. "Everyone is looking at you and the second someone spots that you forgot to shave your armpits, all you guys are going to tell everybody. You kind of feel you have to take care of those little things. If you're going to any kind of big event, you need to have someone checking you've not got spinach in your teeth."

Beckinsale also has Hollywood teeth. The sort of teeth Brits aren't genetically endowed with: gleaming white and perfectly aligned. She has an equally flawless French manicure and a Hollywood tan, too. But wait. Isn't the palm of herhand orange? She's still not completely "Hollywood", then - not if she's still applying her own fake tan.

Of course, the Brits never do get it quite right in the Hollywood glamour stakes. It's precisely what makes them so endearing. Kate Winslet refused to get thin, Minnie Driver refused to sleek her hair (well, only on special occasions) and here's Kate Beckinsale with charming orange palms.

It must be dizzying for a down-to-earth girl more at home in denim than Dior suddenly to find herself propelled into the realms of fashion icon and clotheshorse du jour. The new issue of InStyle has Beckinsale as its cover star, with a 10-page fashion story featuring her dressed in various Forties guises. Beckinsale looking winsome on a ship in Jasper Conran. Beckinsale sitting in a dock in yellow Prada.

One wonders how Beckinsale is coping. She has been advised, allegedly, not to talk about the anorexia which troubled her several years ago: not good copy, not glamorous. If you're going to be Hollywood, you must aspire to the illusion that your thinness is entirely natural and gained at no more personal expense than a couple of trips to the gym and a low-carb diet.

Beckinsale is happy and healthy now, though: grounded by her seven-year relationship with Welsh actor Michael Sheen and with a two-year-old daughter, Lily. It has been widely reported that she had no idea she was signing onto a blockbuster movie - which really shows how determinedly English and un-Hollywood she is. She knew the film was on a large scale, but that's about all. "I had not long had a baby and was really up to my ears in that. All I knew was that I read the script and cried several times - which rarely happens."

Beckinsale has been asked ad infinitum: is she ready to become a giant star? No, she's not prepared. How could she be? She's "just glad that 90 per cent of my life is about potty training". She and boyfriend Sheen are currently living a peripatetic life. Beckinsale doesn't mind while Lily is still "portable" but says she will attend the same English school as her mum.

She tells a revealing post-pregnancy tale of auditioning on tape for Pearl Harbor, which director Michael Bay has been repeating ad nauseam. He says she kept showing up to auditions wearing "these crazy black leather" trousers. She says: "He lied. I only wore them once, and it was snowing out. It wasn't exactly like I had my nipple rings in.