Kate Beckinsale of 'Love & Friendship' will receive Cinema Vanguard Award

Kate Beckinsale will be the latest recipient of the prize following such recent honorees as Adrien Brody and Beau Bridges. Beckinsale starred in the Austen adaptation 'Love & Friendship' earlier this year.

Actress Kate Beckinsale will receive the Cinema Vanguard Award at this year’s San Diego International Film Festival following the release of Ms. Beckinsale’s well-received movie “Love and Friendship,” for which Beckinsale received praise for her performance.

Beckinsale will be the latest recipient of the award following recent honorees such as Adrien Brody and Beau Bridges. 

The film festival will take place from Sept. 28 to Oct. 2. Movies being screened there will include “Crossing Bhutan,” “House of Norway,” “Citizen Soldier,” and “Underfire: The Untold Story.”

“Kate is a wonderful performer and we couldn’t be happier to present her with the Cinema Vanguard Award, which is an indication of all the fine work she has done in such a wide variety of film roles,” Tonya Mantooth, the festival’s executive and artistic director, said of Beckinsale being selected.

Beckinsale has appeared in such movies as “The Aviator,” “Serendipity,” and “Much Ado About Nothing.” She is set to return to the blockbuster “Underworld” franchise in the upcoming movie “Underworld: Blood Wars,” which will open this coming January. 

It was the Jane Austen adaptation “Love & Friendship,” which was released earlier this year, and Beckinsale’s performance in it that particularly caught the attention of reviewers recently. 

Los Angeles times writer Glenn Whipp called the film “droll, deviously charming” and wrote that “few [of Beckinsale’s previous projects] hint … at the comic ability she displays here.” Alonso Duralde of TheWrap agreed, calling the film “fleet and funny” and writing that Beckinsale has a “wicked facility with dialogue.” 

While Todd McCarthy of the Hollywood Reporter wrote that he felt the film “lacks the stirring emotional hooks found in the best Austen works, on the page as well as the screen,” he still found Beckinsale’s performance intriguing, writing that “there aren’t great depths to the role, but Beckinsale excels with the long speeches and in defining her character as a very self-aware egoist.”