Jean Baptiste Lacroix/WireImage.comFor anyone who thinks Hollywood's skinny-minnie starlets don't eat—especially right before the Oscars—you should have lunch with Kate Beckinsale.
"I'm starving," Beckinsale said when she sat down at this afternoon's Los Angeles Confidential magazine luncheon in her honor, at the Mondrian hotel's Asia de Cuba restaurant. "I'm just gonna shove it all in!"
And that she did. The British beauty didn't hold back, enjoying—ready?—tuna tartar, calamari salad and black bean and chickpea dumplings, hearty pieces of Alaskan butterfish and chicken palomilla and even some helpings of side dishes like plantain fried rice with avocado salad.
Calories aside, she showed off her stunningly in-shape physique in a Michael Kors minidress. She did the same last night in a vintage YSL (above) at the Art of Elysium benefit at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
No word, however, on what she and Paula Abdul had to chat about. But by the time lunch was over, Abdul had slipped her number to Beckinsale. Maybe she's hoping to score American Idol tickets?
Meanwhile, Beckinsale tells Los Angeles Confidential that her celebrity status in Hollywood—she recently moved to the West Coast from London—"occupies quite a small part of my life.
"I'm in complete denial about being a celebrity," she says. "I spend 80 percent of my time in my kitchen, and occasionally I'm wheeled out to pretend to be Kate Beckinsale for awards shows. I'm not at nightclubs every night, but I'll take my kid hiking, and several paparazzi will show up, and it's like, 'What? I'm not shaving my head in public. You need to leave me alone.' "
—Filed by Marc Malkin