After talk show host Jimmy Fallon noticed her phone wallpaper featuring Succession star Brian Cox, Kate Beckinsale revealed why.
The actress, 49, has known Brian, 76, since she was a youngster, and the two have also collaborated on two films during their careers.
They appeared in Prince of Jutland in 1994 and Prisoner’s Daughter last year as a father and daughter.
However, when Jimmy Fallon appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Monday, he said that he couldn’t help but notice the actress’ phone background featured the Scottish actor.
‘Backstage we were saying hi and I saw your phone screensaver and it was a photo of Brian Cox,’ he said after she joined him on set.
‘Yes, it is,’ she replied, before going on to explain more.
‘I love that man and I love Succession, but I love that man,’ she said.
‘I did a movie with him a couple of years ago and he’s sort of vaguely been in my life since I was a child anyway, because he was best friends with my godfather.
‘I love him so much and he’s got this strange kind of testicular pull that when I am in a low moment he feels a call in a fatherly way and calls me up and pulls me out of trouble.’
Kate went on to say that her comment’sounded hilarious’ and that she was in a ‘testicular frame of mind’ after discussing the latex dress she was wearing.
‘But no really he is lovely and find it comforting every 30 seconds when my phone relaxes and there he is,’ she added.
When asked about their first project, Kate replied that while everyone in it was amazing, the picture itself was “really bad.”
‘It has Christian Bale and Helen Mirren and all these incredible people, and the movie was awful. It was a retelling of Hamlet and it was dreadful, and Brian was my dad in it,’ she explained.
‘I think he was quite cross because he could tell the movie was going to be terrible, so he was not as approachable because he was a bit grumpy because all the sets were wobbling and he kept falling off his horse and things like that.
‘I was still at university so I was just like “I’m here” and I’ve just played his daughter again.’
David Bradley, widely known as Hogwarts caretaker Filch in the Harry Potter films, is Kate’s godfather.
He was most recently seen alongside Brian in the 2013 film An Adventure in Space and Time, which depicted a dramatised account of the circumstances surrounding the development of Doctor Who in the 1960s.
Kate has stated that she appreciates Brian’s dislike of ‘bull****,’ despite the fact that he has been known to speak his thoughts in sometimes cruel ways.
‘What I like is that he doesn’t like bul***, and I f***ing hate bull as well. And so he’s not going toe a party line. He’s just going to say what he thinks,’ she told People.
‘If you’ve read his memoir, he’s rigorously honest about himself and his own failings as a parent and failings in various areas.’
She went on to say that it was a feature she found “incredibly attractive and moving.”
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon airs on NBC in the US.