Kate Beckinsale. Really.

Next week’s dramatic thriller Nothing But the Truth is said to feature an unexpectedly powerful performance by none other than Kate Beckinsale.

Yep – Kate Beckinsale, she of Underworld fame.

Nothing against the British actress, I know she has chops to hold her own with co-stars Matt Dillon, Angela Bassett, and Alan Alda, as do the Broadcast Film Critics Association’s Critics’ Choice Awards, who recently nominated her a Best Actress of 2008.

And you know what, yes, she did the Underworld movies, and Van Helsing, and Vacancy, but she also did Laurel Canyon, and The Aviator, and Snow Angels. So there.

In Rod Lurie’s Nothing But the Truth, Beckinsale plays a Washington, D.C., political journalist named Rachel Armstrong, who writes an explosive story about a government scandal in which she reveals the name of a covert CIA agent.

When a special government prosecutor demands Armstrong divulge her source, she refuses and finds herself behind bars, struggling to defend the principles upon which she has based her career. (I think this should be a must-watch movie for any journalist.)

I love it when Hollywood casts against type.

Photo: Yari Film Group.