Actress Kate Beckinsale keeps her father Richard’s memory alive by watching him in Porridge and Rising Damp with her daughter Lily.
Kate, 45, said her mother Judy had held on to “a million videos” of Richard Beckinsale’s sitcoms, as well as the book from his This is Your Life appearance in 1977.
Richard, who famously played Ronnie Barker’s cellmate Lennie Godber in Porridge, died, aged 31, when Kate was five. He had a congenital heart defect.
Kate, who now lives in LA and is set to star in new ITV thriller The Widow, said of mum Judy: “She has my father Richard Beckinsale’s This Is Your Life book from his appearance on the show with Eamonn Andrews in 1977, which is really cool. That’s a lovely thing to have.
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“We also have like a million old video tapes, which we can’t watch unless we find a video player. She’s a pretty
good custodian of all of that stuff.”
Kate’s 20-year-old daughter Lily has got to know her late grandad through his sitcoms.
Kate said: “The sitcoms my dad was in are, of course, extremely important to me. It’s also nice to show some of it to my daughter Lily. My mum keeps everything. Not just about my career, things that give you a little bit of a window into who you were. It’s fascinating.”
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Richard, whose other daughter Samantha, 52, is also an actress, died in his sleep from a heart attack.
In The Widow, Kate plays Georgia, who goes to the Democratic Republic of Congo believing her dead husband is actually alive.
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Filming in Africa was tough. Kate said: “I fainted one day from being too hot.”
- The Widow starts on Monday April 8, on ITV, at 9pm.
