Kate Beckinsale
Best for: Leather-clad supernatural slinkiness
No one saw it coming when that nice Kate Beckinsale switched from polite roles in period dramas to the leather-clad vampire heroine of action-horror smash ‘Underworld’. Three sequels later, and she’s still kicking undead ass like it’s going out of fashion.
Key films: ‘The Last Days of Disco’, ‘Underworld’, ‘Van Helsing’