Kate Beckinsale keeps her cool in sub-zero temperatures filming Whiteout

KATE BECKINSALE as Carrie Stetko, the lone U.S. Marshal assigned to Antarctica in Warner Bros. Pictures’ suspense thriller “Whiteout.” PHOTOGRAPHS TO BE USED SOLELY FOR ADVERTISING, PROMOTION, PUBLICITY OR REVIEWS OF THIS SPECIFIC MOTION PICTURE AND TO REMAIN THE PROPERTY OF THE STUDIO. NOT FOR SALE OR REDISTRIBUTION

At news conferences in Los Angeles, where it was ironically warmer than usual, Beckinsale said the weather gave the cast and crew something to bond over.

Gabriel Macht as Robert Pryce in Warner Bros. Pictures and Dark Castle Entertainment's action thriller "Whiteout," a Warner Bros. Pictures release.

“There’s something about it being so extreme … there’s something very bonding about it,” Beckinsale said. “It turned out to be a mutual point of contact where everybody could complain about it.”

Beckinsale plays U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko, stationed at the Amundsen-Scott base near the South Pole in Antarctica. She’s trying to track down a killer as six months of winter near at the station.

While the film couldn’t be shot in Antarctica, a frozen lake outside Gimli, Manitoba, doubled for the location. And temperatures there were below zero almost the entire time during filming.

Beckinsale said the level of cold outside Gimli was a shock to her system the first day of filming there.

“That very first day coming out of the trailer, I was worried that I wasn’t going to be able to speak at all, (or) say a line, ever,” she said. “Because my whole throat closed on that first breath.”

The South Pole was reconstructed on four feet of ice atop the lake.

“We really worked hard to make it feel like you were there,” producer Joel Silver said.