That she’s tougher than she looks is maybe why she nearly had a burst appendix last December. “I’ve got quite a high pain threshold, so it had reached a bad stage. I woke up in the night with a stomach ache and it carried on all day and then, after two days, I went to my GP and he sent me to a specialist and I had the operation the same day. I said: ‘Can’t we do it tomorrow?’ and he said: ‘Well, some people would survive. So I said: ‘OK, I won’t go and see Lord of the Rings, then.’”

Being a bit of a toughie has also helped her in her career. Yes, she got her big break in Hollywood playing a traditional romantic heroine in the unintentionally hilarious Pearl Harbor (2001), but Beckinsale is now best known in America for playing no-nonsense action women. She was a gun-wielding vampire warrior in last year’s Matrix-inspired thriller, Underworld, and in Van Helsing, her latest film, she’s a Gypsy princess who battles a whole array of supernatural monsters alongside co-star Hugh Jackman.

As directed by Stephen Sommers — who demonstrated his ability to reinvent the classic Universal horror movies of the Thirties for a new generation with The Mummy (1999) and its sequel — Van Helsing is perfect summer blockbuster material. For Beckinsale, who strides through the film in thigh-high black boots, tight bodices and with a dodgy Mitteleuropa accent, it’s another opportunity to show off her action credentials.