Kate Beckinsale Admits She Doesn't See Herself 'as an Action Actress At All': 'I Was Not Sporty'

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Kate Beckinsale is famous for fighting vampires and werewolves in the Underworld film series, but she doesn't consider herself "an action actress at all."

Speaking to PEOPLE shortly after her latest film, the drama Prisoner's Daughter, world premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, Beckinsale says she thinks she "did ultimately become pigeonholed" by Hollywood after her work in movies like 2003's vampire flick Underworld, which spawned four sequels.

"People tend to associate me most with action movies, which I think out of my whole resumé, probably make up the least," the English actress, 49, says. "But they're the loudest, so you end up with this odd feeling that people are perceiving your career slightly differently than you've experienced it."

"I like to keep things different, keep things, moving, do different things that challenge me, different things that I haven't done before, that frighten me a bit," she adds, referencing her emotional role as a single mother struggling to reconnect with her dad (played by Brian Cox) in Prisoner's Daughter.

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"I don't see myself as an action actress at all," says Beckinsale. "I was not sporty, I had no aspirations of being an action person and I did it as a experiment to see if I could do it. Now of course people are like, 'Oh, you're so seasoned, you're basically, "Here comes Jackie Chan!" ' I'm like, 'F---, I really don't feel like it.' I don't feel like that at all."

While Beckinsale stresses that she's "not somebody who's looking to jump out of a plane" or a "thrill-seeking sort of person," she is attracted to "strong and dynamic" female characters: "I don't necessarily want to play somebody's wife all the time."

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Beckinsale doesn't throw any punches in Prisoner's Daughter, but she did still land in the hospital while shooting the film. Late in 2021, she appeared on The Late Late Show with James Corden, where she opened up about her painful leg injury she sustained on set.

"Having done eight or 900 action movies, I hurt myself putting on a pair of leggings in my hotel room," Beckinsale quipped to host James Corden and her fellow guest, Dave Grohl.

Corden said he thought she may have injured herself filming while "falling off a building or something," but Beckinsale told him she was working on an "intense, emotional drama" at the time of her injury, "not running up walls or anything."

"I was in my hotel room putting on a pair of leggings, and it felt like a sort of guitar string snapped and everything was horrible. I mean, worse than having a baby bad, like bad," she continued. "I couldn't walk, I couldn't lie down, I couldn't sit down. I couldn't do anything."

After she hurt herself, Beckinsale struggled to leave the hotel room and travel to the hospital because she was unable to sit or stand, she said.

"Eventually an ambulance came and they sort of rolled out a sheet and picked me up in it like a sort of sausage, and put me on a gurney," she laughed.

After telling her tale, Beckinsale assured viewers, "I'm alright now."

For more about Beckinsale, pick up this week's issue of PEOPLE.