DUBAI: Actress Kate Beckinsale has claimed she lost her agent after interacting with a social media post calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, and said fellow actor Mark Ruffalo did not respond when she later tried to raise the issue with him privately.
The allegation appeared in a series of Instagram comments that were later deleted, but were visible under a promotional video in which Ruffalo, 58, discussed the upcoming film “Palestine 36.”
Entertainment media has widely reported on the now-deleted comments.
In the thread, Beckinsale, 52, suggested that expressing her views online had professional consequences. She wrote that “it must be so nice not to be fired by your agent for liking a post about a ceasefire and not supporting the murdering of children.”
The “Underworld” star appeared to compare her experience with Ruffalo’s position in the industry, writing that “you’ve not been fired by the same agent that I had, and she sent me a gift the week before, so we didn’t have any beef, but I liked a post about a ceasefire and I’ve got fired on the same day as Susan Sarandon was fired, two days after the end of the strike after nine months of none of us being able to work at all.”
Beckinsale was referencing the 2023 Screen Actors Guild strike, which ran from July to November and halted most film and television production. She also mentioned Sarandon, who was dropped by talent agency UTA after speaking at a pro-Palestinian rally.
A video from the November 2023 rally showed Sarandon telling the crowd: “There are a lot of people that are afraid, that are afraid of being Jewish at this time, and are getting a taste of how it feels to be Muslim in this country.”
Sarandon also urged supporters to continue advocating for Palestinians during the war in Gaza, saying: “People are questioning, people are standing up, people are educating themselves, people are stepping away from brainwashing that started when they were kids.”
In her deleted comments, Beckinsale also described the personal difficulties she was facing at the time, including serious illness in her family. “I was dealing with the fact that on top of my mother having been told she had six weeks to live with brain cancer, and being (a) carer for both of them, the day before my stepfather had had a catastrophic stroke on top of two types of cancer,” she wrote.
She added that the situation, “led to his death and I was preparing to fly to England to bring him back so that I could take full care of him and I was fired in two sentences after 12 years of friendship with my agent and yours who is very close to her elderly parents and definitely knew what I was dealing with, alone.”
Beckinsale did not identify the agent involved. She also wrote that she had previously tried to contact Ruffalo about the matter, adding: “I DMdyou (sic) about this months ago but you ignored me.” -
