When Blake Lively filed a lawsuit earlier this year against her It Ends With Us co-star Justin Baldoni, it triggered something for Kate Beckinsale — a woman who, in her own words, has “about 47 million stories” of mistreatment and lack of safety the film industry.

Last December, Beckinsale posted a candid video to Instagram, explaining that she’d “never met” Lively or Baldoni but felt the actress’s legal action exposed “this machine that goes into effect when a woman complains about something legitimately offensive, upsetting, harmful, whatever, in this industry.” And now, Beckinsale is no longer just speaking out — she’s taking legal action herself.

On June 12, it was revealed that Beckinsale is suing the producers of Canary Black, the 2024 action thriller she led, for what she calls “unsafe conditions” that left her with “severe and debilitating injuries.” The suit, originally filed anonymously in 2024 and now refiled under her legal name Kathrin Beckinsale, describes a disturbing pattern: 15-hour workdays, lack of physical support, and pressure to continue filming even after injury, per The Guardian.

Beckinsale alleges she wasn’t given the equipment or training she needed to prepare for a physically demanding role and suffered a complex meniscus tear in her left knee after being thrown into a wall during a scene. Things only escalated from there. According to the complaint, she was “coerced” into doing further stunt work before fully healing — and that wasn’t the only on-set concern.

Her stunt double broke her ankle, and instead of hiring a qualified replacement, the producers allegedly hired “the girlfriend of the stunt coordinator.” Beckinsale’s agent, Shani Rosenzweig, pleaded with producers in writing, saying, “No one is actually taking real action to put a plan in place to fix this situation.” She went on to ask: “If you’re trying to kill a person, you’re doing a great job.” One producer reportedly responded, “You’re right… it’s CLEARLY not sustainable.”

For Beckinsale, these moments echo a larger pattern. In the same December 2024 Instagram post, she recalled being “forced by a publicist, that I was employing, to do a photoshoot the day after I’d had a miscarriage.” She had pushed back: “I said, ‘I can’t. I’m bleeding. I don’t want to go and change my clothes in front of people I don’t know and do a photo shoot. I’m bleeding out a miscarriage,’” she recalled. The reply? “‘You’ll have to, or you’ll be sued.’”

That wasn’t the only time her health took a backseat to the industry’s demands. “I was put on such a strict diet and exercise program… that I lost my period altogether,” she said, noting that it happened twice. She also described being put into unsafe fight scenes on two different sets, with two different actors — and sustaining real injuries. “I was harmed, to the point that there was MRIs proving it,” she said.

Instead of care or support, she got retaliation. “I was gaslit and made to feel like I was the problem, blamed, ostracized, left out of cast dinners, not spoken to, as soon as I mentioned there was a problem,” Beckinsale said. On another shoot, after voicing concerns about a co-star who was frequently drunk and causing delays, her name on the call sheet was replaced with slurs: “That c—,” “b—,” and “stupid b—.”

Beckinsale explained that she was speaking up now because the cycle has to break. “This is going on, this has been going on forever,” she said. “I’m grateful to Blake Lively for highlighting that this is not an archaic problem that no one’s facing — this is continuing. And then when it does happen, a machine goes into place to absolutely destroy you.”

She’s not alone. Actresses like Keke Palmer, Megan Fox, and Thandie Newton have all spoken publicly about unsafe conditions or retaliation. And like Beckinsale, they’ve done so knowing the personal cost. Calling out the machine rarely stops it, but each time someone does — especially a celebrity with a little more social clout — it gets harder to ignore.

Before you go, click here to see the most important celebrity lawsuits over the past 15 years.