Kate Beckinsale Compares Journalists To Actors: ‘[We] Share Some Qualities’

Actress Kate Beckinsale stars in the new movie Face of an Angel, inspired by the infamous murder of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher in Italy in 2007. Based loosely on the book Angel Face: Sex, Murder, and the Inside Story of Amanda Knox, Beckinsale assumes the role of the book’s writer, Newsweek and Daily Beast journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau, who has been renamed Simone Ford in the film.

Speaking to the Guardian recently, Kate discussed her role as reporter Simone Ford and the similarities actors and journalists share with one another.

“Journalists and actors share some qualities,” the 41-year old actress said in the article.

“Say you’re having a terrible argument with your boyfriend and you’re breaking up. For an actor there’s this still slight distance where you’re observing the event, thinking: ‘This is what it looks and feels like to be breaking up with someone.’ I think that journalists have that same ability to step back and see things from a different perspective. That doesn’t necessarily make the journalist an arsehole, any more than it does the actor.”

Beckinsale also described the importance journalists serve in society — even the ones whose sole reason for reporting on the Amanda Knox trial was for financial gain.

“It was weird for me to be playing the journalist but I realized quickly how important it was for my character that people were giving her information,” Kate said. “It isn’t just salacious, it isn’t just what she wore in court. And if we don’t have journalists we live in a police state.”

After details of the slaying gained worldwide attention in 2007, all eyes turned toward the trial which quickly became tabloid fodder due to the graphic and sexual nature of the killing. Amanda Knox and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were charged with the crime, but four years later, their convictions were overturned citing lack of evidence. Another man, Rudy Guede, was tried separately and convicted of the murder.

Meanwhile, just this week, Amanda Knox, who currently resides in Seattle, learned that she’s been fully acquitted of the 2007 murder by Italy’s highest court, according to the Inquisitr.

“The knowledge of my innocence has given me strength in the darkest times of this ordeal,” Knox said in a statement reported on CNN. “And throughout this ordeal, I have received invaluable support from family, friends and strangers. To them, I say: Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your kindness has sustained me. I only wish that I could thank each and every one of you in person.”

The ordeal that has spanned almost eight years can finally come to a close. Now Amanda Knox can watch Kate Beckinsale relive it all over again on the big screen.

[Photo credit: Pascal Le Segretain / Getty Images]