Kim Cattrall
Kim Cattrall is an actor, born 1956.
For most of the 1980s the parts were written around how she looked, and Kim Cattrall kept finding the joke inside them anyway. Honeywell in Porky's in 1981, Karen Thompson in Police Academy in 1984, the title figure in Mannequin in 1987, Gracie Law holding her own against a whole film's worth of nonsense in Big Trouble in Little China in 1986. Her television credits reach back further still, to Logan's Run and The Hardy Boys / Nancy Drew Mysteries in the 1970s, so by the time Sex and the City arrived she had been working for twenty years.
The 1990s pushed at the edges: Lieutenant Valeris in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Judy McCoy in The Bonfire of the Vanities, Justine de Winter in The Return of the Musketeers, Paige Katz in Wild Palms.
Then Sex and the City, from 1998 to 2004, and Samantha Jones, which brought five Primetime Emmy nominations, four Golden Globe nominations and a Golden Globe win for Best Supporting Actress, plus a Screen Actors Guild ensemble award. What she did with the part was refuse to make it a cautionary tale: she played appetite without apology and without ever asking the audience to like her for it, which is precisely why they did. She reprised it in the 2008 and 2010 films and made a cameo in the revival in 2023.
Since then she has largely worked in television and smaller films: Amelia Bly in The Ghost Writer, Emily French in The Witness for the Prosecution, Helen Tyler in Modus, Colleen Powell in Tell Me a Story, Madolyn Addison in Glamorous, Sophie on How I Met Your Father.
Movies (31)
- Sex and the City (2008)
- Police Academy (1984)
- Sex and the City 2 (2010)
- Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
- Porky's (1981)
- Mannequin (1987)
- 15 Minutes (2001)
- Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
- Crossroads (2002)
- Ice Princess (2005)
- The Ghost Writer (2010)
- The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
- About My Father (2023)
- Baby Geniuses (1999)
- Split Second (1992)
- Masquerade (1988)
- Horrible Histories: The Movie — Rotten Romans (2019)
- Shortcut to Happiness (2007)
- Live Nude Girls (1995)
- Unforgettable (1996)
- Turk 182! (1985)
- The Return of the Musketeers (1989)
- Meet Monica Velour (2010)
- My Boy Jack (2007)
- Modern Vampires (1998)
- Being Canadian (2015)
- Hold-up (1985)
- Ticket to Heaven (1981)
- Rosebud (1975)
- For Better or for Worse (1989)
TV (20)
- Sex and the City (1998)
- Trapper John, M.D. (1979)
- The Hardy Boys / Nancy Drew Mysteries (1977)
- V Graham Norton (2002)
- Tell Me a Story (2018)
- How I Met Your Father (2022)
- Friday Night with Jonathan Ross (2001)
- Who Do You Think You Are? (2010)
- The Paper Chase (1978)
- Tales of the Gold Monkey (1982)
- Alan Carr: Chatty Man (2009)
- Logan's Run (1977)
- Wild Palms (1993)
- Creature (1998)
- Modus (2015)
- Queer as Folk (2022)
- What Really Happened to the Class of '65? (1977)
- The Witness for the Prosecution (2016)
- Any Human Heart (2010)
- Glamorous (2023)
Where to start with Kim Cattrall
Start with the series, not the films. Sex and the City writes the character with far more care across its run than the two studio comedies manage, and the 2010 sequel in particular is not the argument for her.
The much better second stop is Big Trouble in Little China, where she is doing screwball at a speed the rest of the film cannot match. If you have only ever seen her as Samantha, that is the one that resets your idea of what she can do.
The Ghost Writer is the dramatic case, a controlled and slightly chilly performance in a very good thriller, and The Witness for the Prosecution is the same instinct in period dress.
For the 1980s, Mannequin and Police Academy are the ones people remember, and both are exactly as silly as you expect. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is the outlier of that era, and she is genuinely good in it.