<p>Kathrin Romary Beckinsale, known to filmgoers as Kate Beckinsale, lost her actor father to a heart attack when she was five years old. Her widowed mom, actress Judy Loe, eventually moved in with director Roy Battersby when Beckinsale was nine, but the intervening years were a challenge. The actress, who remains close to her mom and stepfather, has deep respect for the trials Loe faced during her years as a <a href="https://esme.com/voices/perspectives/whats-a-solo-mom" target="_blank" class="wordlink">Solo Mom</a>. “She was a widow at 31, and she was an only child, and by that time her parents had died, too,” Beckinsale told the <em>Daily Mail</em> in 2008. She also shared that Loe was in hospital recuperating from surgery when she received the news that her husband had died. Now a mother herself, Beckinsale noted, “My mother had me at a similar sort of age as I was when I had Lily, and I feel so blessed not to have to deal with what she had to.”</p><hr><p><span style="font-size: 11px;">Image via Denis Makarenko / Shutterstock.com</span><span style="font-size: 11px;"></span></p>
