Kate Beckinsale was hospitalised after passing out filming The Widow

27 February 2019

Kate Beckinsale was rushed to hospital after "passing out" whilst filming her new series 'The Widow' in South Africa.

Kate Beckinsale

The 44-year-old actress - who portrays Georgia Wells in the eight-episode Amazon TV drama - has revealed she overheated whilst on set, but luckily one of her "very nice" co-stars, who she chose not to name, caught her.

She recalled to the Daily Mail newspaper: "It was incredibly hot - so hot that I ended up getting taken to the hospital one day for passing out.

"I just keeled over into this very nice, huge actor, which was lucky. Friend for life!"

Kate - who has 20-year-old daughter Lily with ex-partner Michael Sheen - did however get to have some fun on safari during her days off.

She said: "I brushed a lion with a hairbrush at one point; he was chilling."

The 'Total Recall' star - who stars alongside the likes of 'Black Mirror' star Babs Olusanmokun and and 'Me Before You' actor Charles Dance in the thriller series - revealed just last month that she was hospitalised after suffering a ruptured ovarian cyst.

Kate took to Instagram to post a picture of herself from her hospital bed, where she revealed she was in pain from the injury - in which a cyst inside the ovaries becomes so large it pressed against nerves and eventually ruptured - and said being on morphine to ease the pain had caused her to cry.

Alongside the picture, Kate wrote: "Turns out a ruptured ovarian cyst really hurts and morphine makes me cry. So thankful to everyone who looked after me #wobbly (sic)"

Kate didn't give any further details on her condition, but surgery on a ruptured ovarian cyst is only carried out in severe cases, and most cysts are simply treated with pain medicines, such as the morphine Kate received.

Meanwhile, 'The Widow' marks Kate's first scripted series after spending the bulk of her career working the movie business.

The show, which will premiere on ITV in the UK and on Amazon Prime Video in the US, was filmed in Wales and the Netherlands as well as South Africa.

Kate has a long-standing working relationship with Amazon, having previously starred in 'The Only Living Boy in New York' and the comedy 'Love & Friendship'.