Actress Kate Beckinsale suggests a solution for healthier marriages: Don’t live together

In a recent conversation with Women's Health, actress Kate Beckinsale suggested that marriages would be healthier if partners lived in separate houses.

"I think more people would do well married if they didn't have to live in the same house," she told the magazine.

"Being married is kind of easy," Beckinsale added. It's the whole "living-with-the-person thing" that, in her experience, "is a lot."

For women, in particular, Beckinsale reasons, cohabitation usually results in the mental subjugation of their needs to the other partner.

"I also think that for women especially — and this is generalizing — but I think it's common for us to mentally subjugate our needs to whoever else is in the room. So if you've got a husband, a boyfriend, kids, or parents, it's so easy to come in with an idea of what you'd like to do, and then end up going, 'Oh no, no, no, it's fine.' And it's quite nice to not always have to negotiate that," she said.

Beckinsale has been married once before to director Len Wiseman, but the two divorced in 2016 after 11 years of marriage. She also has a 20-year-old daughter with a former boyfriend Michael Sheen.

'Women are really f***ing angry right now'

Beckinsale also had quite a bit to say about gender double standards. The 46-year-old actress opened up to Women's Health about the struggles that come with being an older woman in the Hollywood limelight.

"It can feel like a little bit of a political act to be a woman over 32 who is having any fun at all," she said. "And by that, I don't mean doing drugs and drinking and partying — because I never am — but being goofy, and going out, and not going, 'Omigod, I'm going to sit home and anticipate menopause while crocheting.'"

Men in similar situations don't draw the same ire or criticism, she lamented.

"I witness men constantly doing whatever they like — whether that's in relationships, or deciding to buy a motorbike, or getting a tattoo. It has not been interpreted as 'Why hasn't he had more children?' or 'Is he ever going to decide to become a parent?' or 'Why has he had so many girlfriends?'"

Beckinsale says that her forthcoming role in the female-driven action-comedy, "Jolt" — which tells the story of a woman with an impulse-control disorder who becomes violent when angered — relates to the frustration many women feel about this double standard. She claims that when she explains the character to other women, their reply is always, "Oh. Me."

"Women are really f***ing angry right now," she said.