Does Kim Cattrall need an introduction? ‘Icon’ is a word thrown around far too much. But is it fitting for Cattrall? Abso-fucking-lutely.
The 68-year-old star is the architect of a character so adored that her 70-second cameo as Samantha Jones in last season’s And Just Like That finale caused an internet meltdown. And I don’t think a day passes when I don’t see someone quoting her epic line, ‘I don’t want to be in a situation for even an hour where I’m not enjoying myself.’
When we speak, Cattrall is in London, one of her three homes alongside New York and Vancouver Island in Canada. She flits between them with her long-term partner Russell Thomas, an audio producer she met in 2016 when recording a piece on insomnia for Woman’s Hour on Radio 4.
Earlier this year, they were in Paris together for Fashion Week, for Balmain and Harris Reed’s Nina Ricci show. Reed described Cattrall wearing his clothes as ‘a true pinch me moment. She just radiates confidence and empowered femininity. I don’t think there’s anyone who doesn’t love Kim.’
She has met with Olivier Rousteing, Balmain’s creative director, several times. He reached out to her after she wore his clothes in the 2023 Netflix show Glamorous, in which she played a beauty brand mogul. ‘The fittings I’ve had with him are lovely,’ she purrs in her mellifluous voice. ‘Nice glass of champagne, just sit down and relax. I try it on, he makes little assessments, it’s very quick. Russ’s took longer. He said, “Oh the sleeve is different” and the tailor replied [Cattrall adopts a French accent], “Yes, this is not Savile Row. This is Balmain!”’
She describes going to the shows with Thomas as ‘like going to the circus, because things are so extraordinary. But it’s such a technicolour world that I’ve invited him to share with me, he thankfully keeps his sense of humour about it, but his tastes have changed.’
Cattrall’s own wardrobe is largely dictated by location and space. ‘In all three places that I live, I don’t have enough closet D space,’ she admits. ‘My life in London and in New York, I get dressed up a lot more than I do on Vancouver Island.’ Once she’s cycled through pieces, lucky friends are the benefactors of clear-outs. ‘I have a couple of girlfriends who take everything. I leave boxes downstairs in my apartment and just say, “Take this. You enjoy it.”’
Things she does hold on to tend to have more sentimental meaning. There are ‘memorable things that I don’t want to part with, things from my mum. We lost her in November 2022, so I still have my bits and pieces and those I’ll never give up.’
Cattrall was born in Liverpool, one of four siblings. When she was three months old, her parents moved to Canada ‘with the equivalent of $20 and a bike’. She credits her mother, who in the ’50s had worked at Lewis’s, Liverpool’s historic department store, with instilling in her a love of dressing up and glamour. ‘They’d have little fashion shows and my mother would announce what the models were wearing. I have this wonderful picture of her in front of a microphone, wearing this black dress. She looks Ava Gardner-ish.’ Years later, while staying with Cattrall at her student theatre digs in New York, her mother found a piece of Balenciaga couture in a secondhand sale. ‘She got it for $15. It was beautiful. I have a picture of her wearing it.’
If her mother was her original fashion mentor, then Patricia Field, the legendary costume designer behind Sex And The City, was perhaps her second. ‘She’s the woman who really took me by the hand and said, “We’re in this together.” It was a collaboration that I’d never had before. The way she worked was very different. She wanted to see what you were drawn to, because she didn’t know at the beginning who this character was, and certainly who I was,’ Cattrall says. ‘We remain very close. She’s got a new store now, she’s 84. We go shopping, we hang out. She brings me things that she’s sometimes found in a sale in Miami. It’s so much fun. And then we have a big lunch, which continues into dinner…’
Did she hang on to much of her SATC wardrobe? ‘I never really kept a lot of what Samantha wore, because it just wasn’t me. I discovered early on that people got slightly confused or miffed, questioning why I didn’t embrace more of Samantha. There is a very clear line for me in my professional life,’ she says.
‘When I gave away some of the outfits, I would give it to charities. My parents, my dad especially, were hoarders. I thought, I don’t want to carry all that with me. It gave other people so much joy. It raised money for really good causes and I had no regrets.’
Last month, Cattrall was announced as a new face of beauty brand Charlotte Tilbury, a perfect glamour pairing. So how does she feel about the intense aesthetic pressure that women in the public eye face? ‘Well, first of all, it’s a bunch of BS. And second, I just don’t have time for it. People expect you to [look] 20, 30 years [younger]? That’s not possible, even with all the potions and procedures and lasers and regimes and diets. It’s unrealistic. Why would you want to put yourself in that straitjacket to begin with? I want to look good, of course, who doesn’t? But I want to feel good while looking good and it’s my choice of how I do that, and it’s no one else’s business.’
I wonder if she still feels ambitious or has something more that she would like to achieve. ‘I’ve never been what I would call ambitious,’ she says. ‘I think being brought up in a British family that was always thought of, especially in a woman, as a bit unseemly. I’ve had a desire to have a career and it’s been beyond my expectations.’
She’s clear about the kind of projects she’s interested in doing now. ‘If it’s a story about a woman my age, then maybe other women who have similar questions or queries or fears will tune in and recognise something,’ she explains, before becoming more philosophical. ‘Nobody has a map. Everybody’s life is so incredibly different. You know, I’ve been celebrated, I’ve been decimated, I’ve been befriended, I’ve been betrayed. Along the way you try to find peace within.’
Main image: Photographer - Claire Rothstein. Styling -Thomas Liam Davis.
Shot on location at The Dorchester, London