At the 16th GLAMOUR Women of the Year Awards, in partnership with Samsung, we’re honouring those women who aren’t afraid to challenge the status quo and reshape the world. From activism to acting, our winners are working across a variety of industries to make the world a better, more equal place.
Taking home the Screen Icon Award is the force that is Kim Cattrall. Here, she speaks to GLAMOUR's European Editorial Director, Deborah Joseph, about the naked truth of being a woman in Hollywood, the art of saying ‘No’ and the advice she would give her younger self…
I’m 15 minutes late for my Zoom date with Kim Cattrall. The clocks went back the night before we speak and the time was put an hour late in my diary. She is unphased by my tardiness, relaxed and instantly smiling and laughing, “I said to Russ [Russell Thomas, her boyfriend of six years – they met at the BBC and liked each other. He followed her on Twitter. She followed back and the rest is history] that’s what must have happened,” she laughs openly, looking in the direction of Russ who remains out of sight, but feels omnipresent in our chat.
She’s sitting at a table in her New York apartment, wearing a round-necked purple sweater, her skin flawless, her hair, that familiar, swishy honey-blonde layered bob. She’s in a great mood. “You probably don’t remember,” I tell her, “but we’ve met before, 17 years ago, when I interviewed you for the first ever Women of the Year Awards in 2004.” She won US TV Actress of the Year; Sex And The City had just come to an end.
“WE’RE STILL HERE,” she guffaws, throwing her head back and her arms out towards me. Her energy is infectious. We are indeed still here: me now as European Director and Editor-in-Chief of GLAMOUR, her now as GLAMOUR’s Screen Icon of the Year, having become a spokesperson not just for sexual liberation, but also for the power of staying unapologetically herself.
She’s an icon, her inimitable career aside, because Kim is one of those unique women who transcends age, whose positive influence both on and off screen for the past almost 50 years has crossed generations to inspire, influence and breakdown the taboos for women around sexual desire and behaviour, being child-free and standing up for herself against the odds.
As Samantha Jones in Sex And The City, she played one of the most groundbreaking and feminist characters of modern times, showing that women could openly explore and celebrate their sexual desire without caring what other people thought. It seems ludicrous now, but before Samantha, I can’t remember a single female TV character who was celebrated for being sexually liberated and happily single without being punished in some way. She undoubtedly paved the way for characters in shows such as Girls and I Hate Suzie, among others.
A lot has changed for women in Hollywood during the time she’s been working as an actor, rising to prominence in the early 1980s in films such as Police Academy and Mannequin, and acting alongside Tom Hanks in The Bonfire Of The Vanities – and this has also been accelerated by the #MeToo movement. As she looks back at her incredible career, where she’s received five Emmy nominations and won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress, did she ever experience misogyny and does she feel that’s now changed in her more recent roles in Filthy Rich and Queer As Folk?
“Look, when I was coming up as a young actress, the casting couch and all of that always existed, and not just in showbusiness, you know?” she admits openly. “I realised very early on that I was going to have to protect myself, that I would not go and meet somebody in a hotel room. I was not going to be alone. I had to go with my agent. So, you protected your ass as much as you could under the circumstances. I remember going into a situation that was really terrifying for me early on during my first trip to Hollywood, when someone told me, ‘I sleep with all my leading ladies.’
I said to my agent afterwards, ‘What was that about?’ And she said, ‘Some people will do what it takes to get the job.’
I thought to myself, ‘It means a lot to me, but it doesn’t mean that much. No way.’”
Does she think things have improved in the past five years? “Yes, the fact we now have an intimacy coach on set instead of someone from wardrobe holding up a robe after you do any kind of physical intimacy scenes is an improvement. There’s a rehearsal. Women are asked, ‘Are you OK if I put my hand here?’ And there’s a step-by-step exploration of what the scene demands. So that’s changed for the better.”
Having played one of the most sexually explicit TV characters in history, and having written a book on Satisfaction: The Art Of The Female Orgasm, and also hosted the documentary Kim Cattrall: Sexual Intelligence, I wonder, did people expect her to be obsessed with sex outside the show also? And once she left the show, did people find it difficult to separate her from the character? “Some people did, some people didn’t,” she admits. “Some people understood that I’d played a part really well. And it’s not real. I’m a person who’s in a relationship. I’ve never really dated; I’ve always been monogamous and with a partner. So, it’s not me in any way. But I also know that when people have had a couple of drinks at a party, they can get out of control. But you know, that could happen to anyone.”
“I experience [misogyny] every day,” she continues, “especially when I’m by myself. But when I’m with my partner, other men know I have back up – and I hate it that, even these times, this is still the case. I get treated differently when I’m with a man, especially my partner.
It’s very condescending that, as women, we’re still treated differently, especially at work. I want to have a conversation. I have 50 years’ experience, I have something to give, which is beneficial to the end result. But change takes a long time. And misogyny isn’t something that happens occasionally. It’s prevalent and it's hurtful.”
As well as standing up for sexual autonomy, she’s also become an inspiration for many in her ability to know her own boundaries and having the confidence to turn down the third Sex And The City movie and this year’s spin-off series, And Just Like That… in particular.
Much has been made of the fact that she didn’t get on particularly well with her co-stars. Was she ever afraid of the consequences of saying ‘No’ to something so high profile, or that there may be backlash for being generally more verbally outspoken, especially on Twitter, which she often uses to control her own narrative on her life situations?
“Yes, especially on social media. When you think about what happens to you when you stick up for yourself in any given situation in your world, you have to have a very, very thick skin. And does it hurt sometimes? Yes. But it is my right as a person, never mind as a woman, to say what is right for me.” Our conversation segues for a moment, as I ask how she feels about Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter? “I find him terrifying.” Would she consider coming off it now? “Yes, I would.”
But back to the power of saying ‘No’. Who has inspired her? “I watched an interview with Sophia Loren once and she said she’d worked with a wonderful director who said to her, ‘You say “Yes” too much. Let me find out who you are by what you say “Yes” to and what you say “No” to.’ And to me, the most important thing about my career as an actor is to keep mixing it up.”
She says of life generally, that she has “a lot of joy” about decisions she makes, and when it comes to regrets. “Who cares? I can’t do anything about it.” So, I’m taking that as the final word on the situation.
She tells me she has stayed very close to the show’s costume designer Patricia Field and creator, writer and producer Darren Star, who have gone on to create Emily In Paris together. Are the TikTok rumours true she’s going to make a guest appearance? “Oh,” she laughs. “ I don’t know anything about that, but I love Darren.” And she tells me later she is having lunch with Patricia the week we speak, so watch this space.
Born in Liverpool in 1956, Kim’s father moved to Canada in search of work, leaving her and her mother behind; they later joined him when Kim was three years old. She returned to Liverpool for two years, aged 11, when her grandma became sick and remembers being around Penny Lane around the time of the Beatles. She moved back to Canada before moving to New York City, where she went to The American Academy of Dramatic Arts aged 18. I wonder, where in her childhood did she learn to speak up for herself? “My mother was one of eight,” she says. “She grew up in such abject poverty, she didn’t even have towels when she came out of the bath. That background of deprivation was very much part of my childhood; I remember my mother always being hungry. But that made me think, ‘I’m always going to take care of myself.’ There was a grit there that’s been passed on to me.
My father was an officer in the British Army, and my mum was a secretary. It was very clear what their roles were. But for my generation, it was a little more confusing. But truly what I learned from my parents was not to make waves. Just go with the flow. Don’t stand out. I realised that was not how I was going to live my life. I wasn’t happy. I like to have a point of view. As a result, in my life, I’ve felt invested in expressing women of my age, whatever age it’s been and what they have to say. Whether it’s about being childfree, or women’s sexuality, or menopause, I’ve found a real power in being an ally and expressing these experiences. The whole cycle of getting older and maturing, and what you want changes – you can’t hang on to what you were.”
One thing Kim has never done is stand still, never looking back. She’s flying in for the GLAMOUR Women of the Year Awards from New York, and she’s excited to return to London where she has an apartment near Buckingham Palace. Her favourite pastimes when here are eating out, walking in Green Park and heading to Kew Gardens, who she is an ambassador for. “Having that time out is so important to me,” she says. She’s spent more time in London than “anywhere else”, she describes it as a second home, though she divides her time between Vancouver Island (where she spent most of the pandemic reading and cooking) and New York.
I read that she became a US citizen in 2020, just in time for the Trump election so that she could have her say. Was that the real reason? And how does she feel about the recent Roe v Wade abortion ruling? “Yes. It’s terrifying. I’ve never lived in an America that didn’t have Roe v Wade to protect women.” What can we do? “Vote. That’s what we can do. I remember so clearly being at a dinner party when Hillary Clinton was running [in a previous election],” she recalls. “I was shocked at its table of women. The alternatives were Donald Trump (who hilariously once had a very orange cameo in Sex And The City back in 1999) and Bernie Sanders. And I just thought, ‘Gals, we need to get on the bus here and get together as women.’ Because these are the realities of what is at stake with that kind of leadership.”
Could she ever envisage a career in politics? “No,” she laughs. “I have too many clear points of view to go into politics. Though I sometimes think to myself, ‘Women are so busy all the time, there’s so much expected of [us] and there’s only so much you can give.’ But when the oxygen mask drops, be the first person to put it on, because you’re the captain of your ship. And you have to make sure you’re not on the rocks in a storm. You want to navigate things. Not expect someone else to do that for you.”
Our hour is up. She’s a lot of fun. I could hang out with her all day. As a parting shot, I ask her, what would she like to say now to that woman I met 17 years ago – the one who had just left one of the world’s most groundbreaking TV shows and was heading into the great unknown?
“WELL DONE!” she howls with laughter, patting herself on her back.
