Alex O'Loughlin offers Kate Beckinsale a bit o' the good stuff in an early scene from 'Whiteout,' a new thriller opening this weekend

Credit: AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures

I'll have a review of "Whiteout" when it opens, but suffice it to say it's not going to redefine the thriller genre for anyone. 

It's got a solid ensemble cast, though, and when we were invited to participate in the press day, I was happy to do it because (A) I like Kate Beckinsale's work a lot, and I wanted to talk about some of her smaller films with her and (B) I was curious to see who the heck Alex O'Loughlin was.

Ever since we started HitFix, I have been amazed at the traffic that floods the site every time we run anything about this Australian actor.  Amazed, since I've never seen him in anything, and I feel like I have a pretty good handle on who's working at any given point.  How could this guy mobilize such a passionate fan army while staying totally off my radar up until now?

They flew us to Antarctica to conduct the interviews and forced us to do our introductions standing outside.  Thankfully, I'm isulated by pizza and cheese fries, so I was able to brave the sub-zero temperatures clad only in a blazer:

[more after the jump]

Here, I kick off the conversation by asking him about that rabid fanbase, and then I discuss this film with him and with his co-star Gabriel Macht:

I felt like I needed to grow a full beard just to compete with the testosterone in that room.  Between the three of us, no ladies could have survived that six minutes.  It's a good thing none of them walked in... they would have been overpowered by the sheer manliness.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's Kate Beckinsale, who is both startlingly pretty in person and also a canny manipulator of the Hollywood system.  Those "Underworld" movies give her the freedom to make films like "Nothing But The Truth" and "Snow Angels," and we talk about how that works in our chat:

Did I mention she's awfully pretty?

"Whiteout" opens Friday, September 11th.

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