KISMET KATE IN MOVIES AND IN LIFE, ACTRESS BECKINSALE YIELDS TO THE WHIMS OF FATE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

Then all of this happened.

``Everybody made fun of that,'' notes Kate Beckinsale, the young English actress who spoke the above, immortally trivializing (or so it seemed at the time) words in the movie ``Pearl Harbor.''

Now that we've experienced a disruption of equally unexpected magnitude, however, that line from the critically excoriated movie arguably captures how many Americans feel about a world that violently and irrevocably changed for them on Sept. 11.

``I had my own issues with some of the lines in 'Pearl Harbor','' Beckinsale admits. ``But a lot of them, if taken out of the very patriotic context of the war, might have seemed kind of overblown or cheesy. As soon as you're in that kind of situation, however, it doesn't seem like that anymore. This was a perfect example.''

Of all the movie people whose work has been affected by the terrorist attacks, Beckinsale's might be the unique case. Not only did her summer semiblockbuster eerily reference the last time America was unexpectedly struck from the air, but the actress' next film, the romantic comedy/fantasy ``Serendipity,'' opens today following some speculation as to whether it should.

Although the picture's distributor, Miramax Films, apparently has never intended to postpone ``Serendipity'' in response to the World Trade Center calamity, the film's portrayal of New York as a comfortable, urban wonderland environment could understandably be construed by some as out of touch with the times, if not forevermore outdated. And a few establishing shots of the former Manhattan skyline were indeed hastily removed from the film's release prints in recent weeks.

For Oxford-educated Beckinsale - who has made a habit of playing very wise girls in such films as Kenneth Branagh's Shakespeare romp ``Much Ado About Nothing'' (her 1993 big-screen debut, made when she was still a teen-ager), ``Cold Comfort Farm'' and ``The Last Days of Disco'' - the release-or-not-release debate is valid. But the decision to put the movie out now is quite evidently the right one.

``There are arguments for both sides,'' she notes. ``But the thing about the movie is that there's nothing cynical in it, nothing ugly about it. It's very much an ethereal fairy tale, and one of the characters in the movie is New York and that kind of odd thing about it, that magical things do happen there. And the fact that this is such a love letter to the city, I think, is a good thing. I hope that people see it as some kind of light relief that, while not skirting around it, is celebrating New York.''

A light confection 

``Serendipity'' is one of those soufflelike contrivances, long on fate and deliriously orchestrated near-misses that keep the romantic tension at a high, bubbling boil. One winter day in 1990, John Cusack's Jonathan and Beckinsale's Sara meet over a pair of gloves at Bloomingdale's. Both want to give the hand warmers to their respective significant others for Christmas. One thing leads to another and they wind up spending the rest of the day and much of the evening together. When it comes to arranging a second meeting, however, Sara insists on a series of tests - involving an elevator race, a marked bank note and an inscribed book - that would first indicate whether fate intends for them to be together.

Years later, Jonathan is about to marry and Sara, who relocated to San Francisco, has just been proposed to by her musician boyfriend. Neither has forgotten that day in New York, however, and as moments of truth draw nearer, they each go to increasingly desperate lengths to try to track down one another, just in case.

Even in the steadiest hands, such airy nonsense can get hopelessly coy remarkably fast. And since Sara is the source of most of the film's credulous bubble-headedness, Beckinsale faced a challenge that transcended spouting clunker lines in a war action spectacular.

`Real and flawed'

``I was worried in the beginning, because the 'Serendipity' script was very much a sketch,'' she admits. ``We were very attracted to the general idea of it, but my real concern was that she didn't come off as just this silly, mysterious female who has nothing to her other than this one, crazy thing that's actually really annoying. That was the risk we took, so I wanted to make her as real and flawed and odd and charming as possible, so that didn't happen.''

Director Peter Chelsom, the inventively quirky British filmmaker (``Hear My Song,'' ``Funny Bones'') whose last American film was the trouble-plagued, unconvincing ``Town & Country,'' was equally determined to make ``Serendipity'' as buyable as possible.

Casting Beckinsale was a key part of that strategy.

``She was the very, very first actress that I auditioned for this part, remarkably,'' Chelsom says. ``The first word that comes to mind about her is intelligent, and that's the big plus. I felt this film was never going to work unless we had substantial casting in the leads, because it's such a whimsical premise. It's a very light movie, and I thought that what you needed more than anything was an intelligent actress saying, on behalf of the cynics in the audience, 'This is absolutely ridiculous ... But, dammit, I'm going to fly to New York and try to find this guy.' ''

Beckinsale is a little bewildered by all this talk about how smart and grounded she seems.

``Oh God, hopeless!'' she describes herself, laughing. ``I'm ashamed to say I don't drive, and there are so many things I've got to get better at. My skills are acting, speaking Russian and, y'know, making tents and stuff for my 2-year-old daughter. Nothing very useful, I feel, at the moment.''

Although she wrote award-winning stories as a teen-ager and majored in French and Russian literature at university, Beckinsale was at least as destined to end up in the acting business as the pair in ``Serendipity'' are to eventually find true love.

Though he died when Kate was still a child, her father, Richard Beckinsale, was one of Britain's most beloved television comedians. Mom Judy Loe is also an actress, as is Michael Sheen, the father of her little girl, Lily.

After time and effort spent trying to avoid it, Kate has come to the conclusion that she loves acting more than anything other than her family. But she stops short of acknowledging that she was destined to fall in love with an actor as well.

``I can't imagine having a relationship with anybody who wasn't Michael, to be honest,'' she says. ``I was lucky. I wasn't aiming to go for an actor at all but, sadly, it's who you meet. Trolling for a nice doctor on a movie set ... there's usually only one and it tends to be a woman, so no luck there!

``I think that Michael and I both occasionally long for a wife,'' she adds with a grin, ``someone who has dinner on when you get home and asks, How was your day? But because we both do this, we don't really get that at all. But what you do get is a real understanding of where the other person is coming from, what the pressures are ... not that that makes you necessarily more sympathetic when they don't call the plumber while they were hanging around all day on the set!''

Events have brought a wholly unexpected new pressure. Sheen began working on a movie in England last month while Beckinsale has remained in L.A. with Lily since the attack, except for a short sojourn to New York for ``Serendipity's'' premiere earlier this week. Scheduled to begin work soon on a new film, the site-specifically titled ``Laurel Canyon,'' the actress will obviously be in California for some duration.

``I'm, flatly, torn, with everything that's going on,'' she confesses. ``It's odd being away from my family and my partner's in England working, so I've got that sense of, should I get back to them. I've always been afraid to fly, though, so now that's obviously gone into overdrive with this thing. But I've made being with Lily the one constant in her life, and as far as I'm concerned I'd be traveling with the most important person in the whole world, so I do worry a lot about that.''

Hoped-for result

In the category of, if anything good comes out of (ahem) all of this, Beckinsale hopes a broadening of spirit might be it.

``One thing that I was very, very aware of when I was promoting 'Pearl Harbor' was that cynicism really had become a way of life,'' she explains. ``It was very easy to be kind of jaded and arch about things. I really despise those qualities, I find them lazy and mean. And I think that what's been so extraordinary since this happened is that that's gone. People aren't making cutting, waspy comments about all of this stuff.

``People are actually having to value human life in a way that I think we'd gotten very far away from because of the luxury of peacetime. I wonder if it's just a human trait that, when you do feel safe, you don't work hard enough on those things. It's a hard thing to think about and I wish it hadn't happened this way, but if there is a new relishing of just life, I welcome that.''

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Fateful encounters

For actress KATE BECKINSALE, first it was war in `Pearl Harbor,' and now it's a New York City romance in `Serendipity'

(2) Kate Beckinsale on `Serendipity' and its setting

(3) Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack portray would-be lovers who separate after one day together - and then wonder if destiny will reunite them - in ``Serendipity.''