Kate Beckinsale has hit back at press reports she claims “deliberately twisted” her words to make her seem “superior or arrogant”, after suggesting her high IQ may have been a “handicap” in her acting career.
Earlier this week, the Hollywood star revealed on The Howard Stern Show on US radio station SiriusXM that her IQ score had been tested as 152 as a child.
However, she suggested her intelligence may have been a “handicap” in her career.
Following a number of stories published by US outlets about her comments, Beckinsale shared a lengthy response on Instagram criticising some of them.
What is Kate Beckinsale’s I.Q.? The #GuiltyParty star called her mom live on the air with @HowardStern to get the answer.
Stream the full interview on @siriusxm 👉 https://t.co/KUTVCE9BQm pic.twitter.com/6lWuykEShE
— Stern Show (@sternshow) October 20, 2021
The London-born actress, 48, said she had faced a “dilemma” when asked about her IQ by Stern.
“Tell the truth? Refuse to answer the question? Lie? Pretend it was lower? I told the truth and some journalists have been triggered by this,” she said.
“Are we really jumping on women for answering a question truthfully about their intelligence or education? Are we really still requiring women to dumb themselves down in order not to offend?”
The Underworld star said she attended an all-girls school where she did not have to worry about “raising my hand making me possibly unfeminine”, and later attended the University of Oxford where “intellectual debate was not only encouraged but the entire point of attending”.
She added: “I am very aware how lucky I am to have had those experiences.
“When I said it has been a handicap in Hollywood it’s PRECISELY because being female AND having an opinion often has to be quite carefully packaged so as not to be offensive or, as in this case, deliberately twisted into signifying ones perceived superiority or arrogance.”
Beckinsale suggested the response to her comments, which she claimed had “spun” her words into “bragging”, made it “abundantly clear” this is still the case.
She continued: “As a woman truthfully answering a question about my own IQ I have been the subject of a few articles trying to shame me for it. This is EXACTLY what I mean by a handicap.
“It’s really important to me that NO percentage of women let alone 60% (Grazia magazine, 2019) should feel they need to lie or dumb down under any circumstances so as not to be a target.”
To illustrate her point, she shared a photo of a headline from the Grazia article which read, I Dumb Myself Down On Dates So I Don’t Intimidate Men, And I Hate Myself For It.
The article referenced a survey in which more than half of respondents admitted they had “dumbed down” on dates.