Kim Cattrall

Kim Cattrall (birthname: Kimberly Victoria Cattrall), though best known for her role as Samantha in HBO’s trend-setting series, Sex and the City (1998-2004), acted in nearly 40 features since 1975. Cattrall was cast by Otto Preminger in his 1975 thriller, Rosebud, with the then-18-year-od newbie acting opposite the likes of Peter O’Toole, Richard Attenborough, Cliff Gorman, Claude Dauphin, Peter Lawford, Raf Vallone, and Isabelle Huppert.

Cattrall acted in several Canadian movies in the 1970s and 1980s, including director Bob Clark’s version of Bernard Slade’s play, Tribute (1980), starring Jack Lemmon (nominated for the Best Actor Oscar), Robby Benson, and Lee Remick; and also writer-director Ralph L. Thomas’ drama, Ticket to Heaven (1981), with Nick Mancuso and Saul Rubinek. Cattrall reunited with director-writer-producer Clark for her first significant role in the smash hit gross-out comedy, Porky’s (1981), with Susan Clark.

This led to Kim Cattrall joining the guys in another smash hit comedy, writer-director Hugh Wilson’s Police Academy (1984), with Steve Guttenberg and Bubba Smith. Cattrall’s box-office streak ended with the Clark-directed dramedy, Turk 182 (1985), with Timothy Hutton, Robert Urich, Robert Culp, Darren McGavin, and Peter Boyle. Cattrall played opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo in Alexandre Arcady’s French-Canadian crime comedy, Hold-Up (1985), and then opposite Kurt Russell in John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China (1986), a cult movie that performed poorly in its initial release.

Cattrall enjoyed her first hit rom-com as co-star in Mannequin (1987), with Andrew McCarthy, under the direction of Michael Gottlieb (who co-wrote with Edward Rugoff). Kim Cattrall’s hit streak as co-star continued with the mystery-thriller, Masquerade (1988), co-starring Rob Lowe, with Meg Tilly, John Glover, and Dana Delany. Cattrall’s next was a stumble—the mystery thriller Midnight Crossing (1988), with Faye Dunaway, Daniel J. Travanti, and Ned Beatty.

Although Cattrall would have seemed to land in a fine prestige production with the legendary director Richard Lester leading a stellar cast including Michael York, Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, Richard Chamberlain, C. Thomas Howell, Geraldine Chaplin, Philippe Noiret, Christopher Lee, Roy Kinnear, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Alan Howard, and Billy Connolly, the sequel The Return of the Musketeers (1989) was pulled from release by Universal and released on USA Network. Cattrall played opposite Giancarlo Giannini and Kim Coates in writer-director Carlo Liconti’s Good Night, Michaelangelo (1989), and then starred opposite Robert Hays in writer-director Gene Quintaro’s comedy, Honeymoon Academy (1989).

Kim Cattrall played a major supporting role opposite Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, and Melanie Griffith in Brian De Palma’s controversial version of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), which earned a disastrous $15.6 million against a $47 million budget. In a genre leap, Cattrall entered the Star Trek universe for writer-director Nicholas Meyer’s successful Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), the last Trekkie movie with the original TV cast including William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, David Warner, and Christopher Plummer.

Cattrall continued in sci-fi with Split Second (1992), co-starring Rutger Hauer; she then co-starred with Dana Delany, Cynthia Stevenson, and Olivia d’Abo in writer-director Julianna Lavin’s little-seen comedy, Live Nude Girls (1995); Cattrall played support to Ray Liotta, Linda Fiorentino, and Peter Coyote in the John Dahl-directed sci-fi thriller, Unforgettable (1996); and then Cattrall reunited with Bob Clark for his successful family comedy, Baby Geniuses (1999), with Kathleen Turner, Christopher Lloyd, and Ruby Dee.

Kim Cattrall entered a new phase in supporting roles in Hollywood movies with writer-director John Herzfeld’s buddy cop comedy, 15 Minutes (2001), starring Robert De Niro, Edward Burns, and Kelsey Grammer, followed by a supporting role in the long-shelved, financially disastrous comedy (shot in 2001, but released in 2007, with a $30 million budget and a return of $687,000) directed by producer-star Alec Baldwin, Shortcut to Happiness (2007), with a cast including Jennifer Love Hewitt, Anthony Hopkins, Dan Aykroyd, and Amy Poehler.

Cattrall played support in Crossroads (2002), directed by Tamra Davis and written by Shonda Rhimes, and starring Britney Spears, Anson Mount, Zoe Saldana, Taryn Manning, and Dan Aykroyd, earning a strong $61 million; Cattrall was then cast in the commercially unsuccessful teen sports dramedy from Disney, Ice Princess (2005), with Joan Cusack, Michelle Trachtenberg, and Hayden Panettiere. Master filmmaker John Boorman cast Cattrall in one of her last co-starring roles in opposite Brendan Gleeson in the Irish drama, The Tiger’s Tail (2006), with Sinéad Cusack, and Ciarán Hinds.

Kim Cattrall finally reunited with her girls in writer-director Michael Patrick King’s much-anticipated big-screen version of Sex and the City (2008), with Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon, Jennifer Hudson, Candice Bergen, and Chris Noth, grossing a potent $419 million. Cattrall joined director-writer-producer Roman Polanski for his superb drama, The Ghost Writer (2010), co-starring Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Williams, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Hutton, and Eli Wallach, premiering at the Berlin Film Festival, but censored in the US release to receive a PG-13 rating. One of Cattrall’s last starring roles was in writer-director Keith Bearden’s indie dramedy, Meet Monica Velour (2010), premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Kim Cattrall returned to the role of Samantha for the sequel, Sex and the City 2 (2010), again written and directed by Michael Patrick King, earning $295 million worldwide. After an extended period working in television, Cattrall returned to feature movies with the financially and critically unsuccessful comedy, About My Father (2023), co-starring Sebastian Maniscalco and Robert De Niro, with Leslie Bibb and Anders Holm.