The Brit was so unprepared for the frigid conditions in Manitoba and Winnipeg she was left voiceless for a day after sucking in the icy temperatures when she first ventured outside.
She says, “There are so many possible ways to die there of being too cold – like if you’ve ever had an alcoholic drink and you breathe in a westerly direction, you’re gonna die! We all panicked.
“When we first went outside, all the men had beards full of ice, which I thought was make-up department tests – but it wasn’t; it was real.
“My hair froze to a point just from breathing on it. I thought, ‘I’m from England and I’ll be able to handle the cold,’ but I’ve never known anything like that. The first day, I wasn’t able to speak because my whole throat closed from that first breath.”
But Beckinsale found a great benefit to being in a place so cold: “In cold weather they have great things inside to do, so I went to museums and children’s theatre places with my daughter, who was there for the whole thing. Outside they had a frozen park which was one of the greatest things I’d ever done.”
