Kate Beckinsale has said that journalists and actors share some qualities as both have "the ability to step back and see things from a different perspective."
The 41-year-old star told The Guardian, "Say you're having a terrible argument with your boyfriend and you're breaking up. For an actor there's this still slight distance where you're observing the event, thinking, 'This is what it looks and feels like to be breaking up with someone.'
"I think that journalists have that same ability to step back and see things from a different perspective. That doesn't necessarily make the journalist an a**ehole, any more than it does the actor."
Beckinsale, who plays journalist Simone Ford in her new thriller Face of an Angel, added, ''It was weird for me to be playing the journalist but I realised quickly how important it was for my character that people were giving her information.
"It isn't just salacious; it isn't just what she wore in court. And if we don't have journalists we live in a police state."
Face of an Angel is in cinemas now.
