Kate Beckinsale says she relates to Prince Harry, William's grief over death of Princess Diana

Kate Beckinsale said she empathises with brothers Prince Harry and Prince William's childhood grief on the death of their mother, as she too lost her father at an early age.

The 47-year-old actress lost her father, actor Richard Beckinsale when she was only five years old. Princess Diana died in a car crash when Prince Harry and Prince William were only 12 and 15 years old, respectively.

"I remember when their mother died, I was in New York, and seeing them in the context of other people sort of grieving for somebody they didn't know ... I thought, 'Oh my God, I really know what that feels like,'" Beckinsale told Dax Shepard on Monday's episode of his Armchair Expert podcast.

She added that no matter your age, "When there's a cataclysmic event, it puts everything into a real sharp focus." The "Underworld" star remembered how it felt "quite weird" to have people she did not know grieve over her father. She said it is something the royals also experienced when hundreds of people mourned the loss of the late Princess of Wales.

"It was hard at the very, very beginning because it did feel like you were having this very personal, horrible crisis — and so was everybody else, but you didn't know them," she explained.

Beckinsale admitted that it really upset her as a child when people assumed her father's death did not affect her that much because she was so young when it happened. She shared, "People would talk about how terrible they felt that they had lost him, but then they say, 'Oh, but you probably don't remember anything, do you, because you were a child.'"

"But then the person you're sharing it with is saying, 'You have less right to this than I do,' which is really odd," she added.

But Beckinsale admitted that she gets "less offended by it" now that she is older. She even thinks that "there is something incredibly special and comforting about how much other people" loved her father and "that, sort of the longer it goes on, [it's] lovely."

Prince Harry admitted in his "The Me You Can't See" documentary on Apple TV+ that Princess Diana's death affected him while he was growing up. He said he drowned his sorrow and sadness with booze and drugs. He also shared that he gets panic attacks and gets very angry every time he hears the clicking of cameras and sees camera flashes because it reminds him of his mum's death.