Kate Beckinsale is the best kind of talk show guest.
When she appeared on ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live! Tuesday to promote her new movie The Only Living Boy in New York, she began by embarrassing her 18-year-old daughter, Lily Sheen. "You know how they have crushes on Justin Bieber and things like that? She's got one on you," the actress told Jimmy Kimmel. "It's a little bit of a tricky situation, because my daughter's dad is dating Jimmy's ex-girlfriend—it's very twisted. It's a sort of horrible, Human Centipede-y vibe."
"Anyway, I think you should be pleased. She's very attractive," Beckinsale told the late-night host. Before he got any ideas, she said, "She's out of your league! I just want you to know that."
To Kimmel's surprise, Sheen was in the audience. "Don't embarrass her," the actress warned.
Addressing the teen directly, the married host laughed and said, "I'm sorry! I had nothing to do with this! This is all her! This is your mother! Let's not ruin the crush thing. I want to keep that going, OK? Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I'm flattered. [Now] we're both embarrassed."
"When you were your daughter's age, did you have a crush on a middle-aged, out of shape, hairy talk show host?" Kimmel asked. Beckinsale laughed and said, "I do think it's a phase, the not conventionally attractive man phase. Not that that's your category! You know what I mean! I didn't really have a type, so I sort of veered from Adam Ant into Boris Becker, and then that really scary looking one from The Pogues that had no teeth for a minute...Shane MacGowan!"
With Becker, Beckinsale said, "I was still at that kind of magical thinking phase where I felt like I could sort of control things with my mind. I feel like I helped him win Wimbledon just by sort of squeezing my uterus a lot. I was so desperate I could literally sort of feel l my fallopian tubes going into a ball. Then he'd keep getting a shot, and I thought it was me. I feel like I share that."
Kimmel mentioned the episode's other guest, Alexis Ohanian, so he asked Beckinsale whether she had ever visited his website, Reddit. "I'm not great on things like that. I know Reddit is the one where sometimes you can find pictures of porn stars with your own face on it. Isn't it? It is, isn't it? I've been sent a few very distressing photos of myself—very busy, actually. Not just sort of in a wicker chair, naked—but involved. You know what I mean? With more than one person. So, when I got sent it, I just immediately sent it to my mother with no explanation to see what would happen," the 44-year-old actress recalled. "She's used to shocks, because she knows about the crush on you and everything. But, really offensively, I get a text back going, 'Oh, darling! Oh, dear! Oh, no! Oh, phew! You've got hardwood floors and that's a carpet.'"
"Is that a euphemism," Kimmel joked, "or is that...?"
"No!" she replied. "It was, 'Oh, my God! What can I possibly cling onto that proves this isn't Kate?' Not my six African American boyfriends—all at once—but the fact that that's a carpet."
Beckinsale's stories had the audience in stitches. After a beat, Kimmel said, "It sounds like you're doing a good job of embarrassing both your mother and your daughter simultaneously."