Kim Cattrall: It’s the perfect time to get back together

May 20 2008 by Emma Johnson, Liverpool Daily Post

Liverpool-born actress Kim Cattrall reprises her most famous role as she returns to the big screen in one of the most eagerly-awaited films of the year. Emma Johnson reports

AS MANHATTAN man-eater Samantha Jones, she changed the way women were perceived.

Sexually voracious, fiercely independent and full of filthy one-liners, TV viewers had never seen anyone like her, but jumping into Samantha’s power suits and dozens of men’s beds did not come easily for Liverpool-born actress Kim Cattrall.

In fact, she turned the role down more than once.

“Some of the scripts terrified me,” she confesses. “I’d just turned 40 when I started the series and I didn’t know if I could play such a sexual, crazed woman because I believe that all those years ago – which is not that many years ago, really – people really did believe that women in their 40s weren’t very sexy and that women in their 20s and 30s were really beautiful because in their close-up they were perfect and gorgeous and young and desirable.”

Now, as women the world over anxiously count down the days to the most eagerly anticipated film opening of all time, Kim is as excited as the rest of us about Sex and the City the Movie. And at 51, the former St Edmunds College girl feels she has a whole new perception of herself.

“What I’m now discovering – and I’m now in another decade – is that, the older I get, the more I have my self-knowledge which makes me feel more sexy. There’s nothing like confidence and feeling that I don’t have to prove myself, I feel comfortable in my skin, I’m not a size two and I can forget about it.

“My life is mine and that I think is a very sexy thing to own. I didn’t have that initially when I was in the series, so when all of this attention sort of happened specifically to this character about sex I found it kind of overwhelming.”

With rumours of fall-outs and a number of false starts, it has taken four years to get Sex and the City to the big screen, but Kim believes it would not have been right to rush straight into a cinematic release.

“All of us had gone in our dif- ferent directions, had different life paths and leaving the show was really, really hard. It was a very difficult time in my person- al life. So I was trying to put a lot of things together,” she explains.

“I’m glad that we didn’t do the movie right away, because I don’t think we would have had any kind of perspective about what was happening to us and what was about to happen. I think it was the perfect time to get back together and do this.”

Having worked on a number of films and won acclaim for her West End turns in plays like Daniel Mamet’s The Cryptogram, Kim was most recently seen with Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe in the period drama, My Boy Jack. So how was it getting back to being Samantha?

“God, it was so fabulous – it was easy and fun,” Kim offers. “The most difficult thing was the first day, there were so many crowds on the street and they were screaming and yelling and it kind of broke my concentration and I was overwhelmed a little bit, as I think all of us were.

“I didn’t know what to expect and someone screaming in the middle of a scene ‘I love you, Samantha!’ or ‘Carrie, I’m over here!’ is distracting and we had never really dealt with that. But we were kind of asking for it because we were shooting on Park Avenue in September, and the city was packed.”

Although those who have seen it have been sworn to secrecy, we do know that SATC the movie picks up three years after the series ended; Carrie – it appears – is finally happy with Big, Miranda is still adjusting to life in the suburbs, Charlotte is bringing up her adopted daughter, and Samantha has abandoned New York to be with her actor toyboy Smith in LA.

Kim is not up for giving much more away, but says that women everywhere will be able to relate to the film’s themes just as they did the series.

“I think there is something so powerful and potent about it,” she says. “And I think it’s be- cause these four characters are really very truthful. I think there is a lot more truth than a lot of women have seen before about what it means to be a girl, a woman, in the world, in society. And it’s kind of exciting to be a part of that.”

As for Samantha, she turns the big 5-0. “I really love the fact that, in a big Hollywood movie about women, that one of them is turning 50. I think that's never been done before,” says Kim.