If you don't think of Kate Beckinsale as being a particularly funny woman, it may be because there's nothing amusing about killing vampires and even fewer chuckles to be had from actually being a bloodsucker.

After bucking for action star status with films like "Van Helsing," "Underworld" and "Underworld: Evolution," Beckinsale is mixing things up with "Click," in which she plays the wife of Adam Sandler's character, a harried family man who receives a magical universal remote control. The low-brow comedy seems like a stretch for Beckinsale, until you recall how many of her early successes -- films like "Much Ado About Nothing," "Cold Comfort Farm" and the 1996 BBC "Emma" -- came in lighter fare.

"Actually for me it was kind of a personal thing, I think, because my father had been in England a very well-known comedy actor, and I think I was very attracted to that because I had grown up on it, but I think I also slightly tried to steer clear of it -- just I didn't want to tread on anyone else's patch, I kind of wanted to be on my own patch," says Beckinsale of her decision to go with darker material.

For American audiences who don't know, Richard Beckinsale, star of the British comedies "Rising Damp" and "Porridge," died of a heart attack when Kate Beckinsale was only five.

She continues, "And then on this movie I actually turned a year older than my father got to, and it was a very liberating moment finding myself. I made it to 32 and I'm in a comedy and everyone's being really nice, and I wasn't away from the family because we shot in L.A. and my daughter was around. And it was just like a blissful and lovely sort of blossoming moment for me, you know."

Beckinsale admits that she had some reservations about appearing in the long-suffering spouse role in an Sandler summer comedy, concerns that never materialized.

"I had such an amazing time on the movie," she says. "I really did think, you know, that I might just be this sort of roaming pair of breasts that wouldn't quite fit. You know what I mean? Everybody would be watching sports and I'd be kind of tolerated and then I might bend over and it might be an event."

Instead, Beckinsale enjoyed being part of the boys club atmosphere on the set and being married to Sandler, popcorn cinema's most popular man-child.

"How was it being married to him? I thoroughly enjoyed it," she laughs. "I didn't have to take him home, I didn't have to yell at him about going and playing golf or all of that stuff that would probably really bug me in real life if I was married to him. But I had the sort of total movie pleasure of everything apart from anything leaking or gross or leaving me on my own or any of that."

The experience also made a Sandler fan of her daughter Lily.

"My daughter has decided that he's a relative," Beckinsale says. "Just generous and brilliant to work with. I mean, really, I was so bummed out when it was over. I felt like summer camp had ended and nobody invited me to Hanukkah."

"Click" goes nationwide on Friday, June 23.