I like the idea of having your cake and eating it twice. Do you think women are more able to do that today?
Women have a much harder deal [than men]. I say that as a woman but also as a mother. We might not have corsets any more but we have just as much body oppression – you have to become the corset now, when you’re naked. There’s the same amount of mental energy going into trying to make your body do something it doesn’t naturally want to do; it’s an excellent way of controlling women. Whenever there are strides made in terms of women getting a vote or the pay gap closing or abortion laws improving, it seems strange that culturally it becomes the vogue to have people emaciatedly underweight or have boobs bigger than their head. It distracts everybody and slows the fight. My daughter is expecting to go to university and have an education and thank God for that, but there are other countries in the world where that’s not the case even now, so we’re still not as far away from it as we might like to think.

Was it nice to finally indulge your comic side?
It is because it’s my favourite thing really, it’s something I’m actually good at. The sort of things that I find funny and the comedy I like, they’re not written that often. I like witty, dry comedies – I love Noël Coward for example.

You studied literature at university. Do you read much now?
We were definitely a family with a lot of books [Beckinsale’s mum is actress Judy Loe and her late father Richard was also an actor]. Then at Oxford, doing double honours in modern languages, I had to read everything in the original. They’d say, “Your next essay is going to be on Dostoyevsky,” so you go, “F***, I’ve got to read all his work in Russian.” Having been addicted to books, it put me off reading for about three years, which was a real identity crisis. It’s like if you work at a chocolate factory – you don’t want to see a Twix ever again. Luckily, I distracted myself by suddenly getting pregnant and once you’ve got a baby you don’t really have time. Now I always travel with at least six books because I get panicky if I don’t have another one ready.

What did you read as a teenager that changed the way you thought?
I remember discovering Ian McEwan aged 13 and being blown away – I got caught reading The Cement Garden in a music class. It’s so amazingly spare and brutal. Also Raymond Carver, Sylvia Plath… I loved all those suffering authors.

What’s the last thing you read that made an impact on you?
Did you read I Love Dick [by Chris Kraus]? I loved that. It was a really bothering book. I think I’m attracted to that feeling when you want to throw a book across the room and also carry on reading.

Is it important to keep that part of your brain stimulated?
I’ve got no choice – I wake up, brush my teeth, open a book. My house is full of books. They’re under the bed, my daughter’s bed, we’ve got a whole closet full… I’m a hoarder. There are certain bookshops I’ll go to and buy 15 books and they’ll say, “That’ll keep you going” and I’ll think, ‘Sh*t, I can’t come in here now.’ It’s like being a drinker!

Kate Beckinsale on body image, staying off social media and her obsession with books