Kate Beckinsale admires our country's 'very long stick'

http://www.politico.com/blogs/anneschroeder/1208/Kate_Beckinsale_admires_our_countrys_very_long_stick_.html

December 5, 2008

Kate Beckinsale admires our country's 'very long stick'

When Kate Beckinsale — the gorgeous, smart and talented British starlet — refers to our Washington Monument as “that very long stick,” it makes you kind of want to just rename the darn thing.

Shenanigans caught up with the actress after the D.C. premiere of her new flick, “Nothing but the Truth,” during a Capitol File bash at the Naval Heritage Center last night. This is, you’ll recall, the film in which she plays a reporter facing jail time for outing a CIA agent, a la Judith Miller of The New York Times.

Beckinsale’s character, a correspondent for the Capital Sun-Times, struggles between the need to protect her source and the steep repercussions that come with sticking to her principle. Alan Alda and Noah Wyle are on her side as semi-helpful attorneys, and a deliciously evil Matt Dillon grills her as the CIA’s special counsel.

After making this movie, Beckinsale said she has a new appreciation for journalists and joked she’s “much less frightened” of them now.

“I think most actresses will say it’s unusual to get a chance to play an intelligent, you know, really smart, together woman,” she told us. “So it was a privilege.”

And, last night was Beckinsale's first foray into Washington.

“I feel like a terrible fraud because I’ve made a movie that is set in Washington, and this is the first time that I’ve ever been in Washington myself,” she admitted.

Beckinsale, looking chic in a gray V-neck dress with short sleeves, black tights, black pumps and dark nail polish, called Washington “amazing” and said she finally got to “legitimize myself” by setting foot here. (Her husband, American director Len Wiseman, spent a lot of time here shooting “Die Hard 4,” she reminded us.)

“It was out of the window of a car, but I saw the White House, which is the most important thing, and then I saw the theater where Lincoln was shot, and then I saw that very long stick,” she said.

(We’re pretty sure she means the Washington Monument.)

“We’ve got one quite like it at home,” she said. “Well, it looks like the London thing to me. We’ve got a similar thing, Nelson’s column.”

So, does Kate like D.C. enough to come back for inauguration? She didn’t rule it out.

“I’d love that, yeah, that’d be amazing.”

After all, she and Wiseman are big fans of our president-elect.

“I didn’t get to vote for him, but I was very happy when he got in. … My husband can vote, you know, so he voted for all of us on our behalf. It’s not my country, and it’s not my president, but I was totally in tears during his speech and everything. It was really moving; it was great.”

For the record, “Nothing but the Truth” opens in D.C. on Dec. 19.

— Jacqueline Klingebiel and Ariel Alexovich

Courtesy of FGPR