If you have any ideas about Kim Cattrall and her Sex and the City character, you'd best let go of them now.
Cattrall is the star of a new movie called Meet Monica Velour, and she plays a fading porn star in a warts 'n' all performance that's already horrifying some loyal Samantha fans.
"Some Americans who have seen the film say to me, 'I didn't like you in this movie!' And I think, 'Yes!' " says Cattrall, laughing. "Not every hooker has a heart of gold!"
Speaking over the phone from New York to promote Meet Monica Velour, Cattrall says this sort of fan discomfort tells her the portrayal is working. "It had to be real," she says of her performance. "If there was a moment or a second that wasn't real people would be like, 'See! There's Samantha!' "
She adds, "I'm not a people pleaser any more. I want to be honest always. In this character, I think I found some of my own voice."
Cattrall sounds feisty but a bit world-weary when she talks about the response to Meet Monica Velour. It's a raw, risky little film and a long way from the roles that made her famous.
"I've been acting since I was 10," says the Liverpool-born Cattrall, "yet people are so intent on putting you within a box. That's who you are, that's what you do, and that's how people reference you. So when I did Ghost Writer, with Roman Polanski, some of the critics were unhappy with what I didn't do!" She laughs again.
"But you just have to let it go. I just want to keep doing different work."
Being in the movies, says Cattrall, was mostly a way to finance what she really wanted to do: Theatre. "In my twenties and thirties, in the movies, I was 'the girl'. Anything I was trying to do was wasted," she says of movies that include Porky's, Police Academy and Mannequin.
"John Carpenter, when we were filming Big Fun in Little China, used to tell me to just say everything faster. I was doing Three Sisters at the same time. Big Trouble was really fun," she says, "but it wasn't Chekhov."
She continues, "Where I am in my life right now is not the same place I was even two years ago. When you age in this business, you do wonder, 'Where do I go from here?' Women have an expiry date. In this business, people say, 'You look good -- for your age, so, ah, what's next?' It's amazing, but that's why I started my own production company.
"I never seemed to have a place in America, so six years ago I went to England and started doing theatre and film. When I turned 35 things changed for me in Hollywood. There was nothing there for me."
Cattrall has been buffing up her theatre reputation for the past few years with hugely successful runs in London's West End in such plays as Private Lives, Whose Life is it Anyway and The Cryptogram, while she also returned to Liverpool last fall to star in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. She'll soon star in another production of Private Lives in Britain, and the show comes to Toronto this fall. "Maybe I'll take the summer off. I'm in a really good place," she says, cheerfully.
"I hope it will lead to an even better place."
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