Kate joins Notting Hill set

English actress Kate Beckinsale is returning from Los Angeles to set up home in London with her husband and daughter. "I've just bought a house in Notting Hill," said the 32-year-old Pearl Harbor star. "It'll be very nice to come back and maybe do a play.

"I feel I've been down a particular sort of rabbit hole for a while, mainly motherhood, and I'm just popping out of it. After all, I'm not doing a very good job [at conquering Hollywood]."

Beckinsale, who grew up in Chiswick and went to private Godolphin and Latymer School, has enrolled daughter Lily, six, in a prep school. "It's important that she grows up in my culture," she has said. "I don't want her constantly taken out of school, sitting in a trailer and becoming a Hollywood child."

Beckinsale moved to Los Angeles four years ago with her then partner and Lily's father, Welsh actor Michael Sheen. The couple split up and in May 2004 she married American Len Wiseman, 28, who directed her in action films Underworld and its sequel Underworld: Evolution.

She says she has finally stepped out of the shadow of her late father, Rising Damp and Porridge actor Richard Beckinsale, who died of a heart attack at 32 when she was five.

"Part of the reason I came to America was to escape just being my father's daughter, which I was quite worried about," she told Tatler. The turning point came in July last year when she passed the age her father was when he died.

Now she is even following him into comedy, playing opposite Adam Sandler in Click, about a man who finds a remote control that lets him time-travel.

"I had steered clear of comedy because of my father," said Beckinsale. "But last year I was the age he was and Lily was the age I was and I felt a blossoming and 'Ooh, I've made it'. "

Her main worry now is turning Wiseman into an honorary Brit. Last year was the first time he had left America. "He hated Marmite but I've managed to get him on HP sauce," says Beckinsale.

She hopes to keep her figure and caramel tan. "Before I came to LA I'd never been to the gym in my life. But when I started Pearl Harbor they made me promise to work out a lot more, they were quite bothered," she said,