Kate Beckinsale has been opening up about the reality of having an “empty nest” when her daughter leaves home for university.
Kate, 44, is preparing for her daughter, Lily, 18, to leave home for university and describes the feeling as “incredibly exciting and scary”.
“But then, I quite like being scared. I’ve lived under a structure of school terms for a long time”, she added.
She explained: “Now I have this open landscape which I haven’t had since I was 22.
“Separating is really hard, but it’s really important.
“It’s the time when you are really called on to be an adult, and the most adult thing you can do is let your children go”, she mused.
Kate is originally from London but has been living in Los Angeles to allow Lily to complete school there.
The Pearl Harbor actress admitted: “I go back a lot. In the last year or two, I’ve gone back to England so many times and I had that feeling of an aching familiarity.
“Yet it felt quite different as well, and that made me feel really odd.
“When you’ve been away from where you were brought up for more than five years, you’re a stranger everywhere, unfortunately”.
Having so much free time on her hands is quite a bizarre prospect for the actress, according to The Mirror.
She said: “I genuinely don’t know what I’m going to do and there is something incredibly luxurious about being able to say ‘I’ve no idea where I’ll be in a year’s time. I couldn’t possibly tell you’ ”.
Last year, Kate took to Instagram to show off a photo collage of her daughter on her very first day of school and her final “first” day of school.
Lily, whose dad is actor Michael Sheen, has inherited her mum’s stunning looks and has also ventured into the world of acting.
At the tender age of 17, Lily followed both of her famous parents into the movie industry.
She has starred as the childhood version of her mother’s Underworld: Evolution character and has a string of other movie credits to her name.
Can you identify with Kate’s feelings about having an empty nest mums? Let us know.
