Kim Cattrall

Early life

Kim Victoria Cattrall was born on 21 August 1956 in the Mossley Hill area of Liverpool, to British parents; secretary Gladys Shane (née Baugh; 1929–2022) and construction engineer Dennis Cattrall (1925–2012). She has two sisters and a brother, Christopher Cattrall (1963–2018). When she was 3 months old, her family emigrated to Canada and settled in Courtenay, British Columbia. At age 11, she returned to Liverpool when her grandmother became sick. She took acting examinations at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, but returned to Canada after one year and moved to New York City at the age of 16 for her first acting role.

Career

1970s–2000s

Cattrall began her career after graduating from Georges P. Vanier Secondary School in 1972, when she left Canada for the US. She attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, and upon her graduation signed a five-year film deal with director Otto Preminger. She made her film debut in Preminger's action thriller Rosebud (1975). A year later, Universal Studios bought out that contract and Cattrall became one of the last participants in the contract player system of Universal (also referenced as MCA/Universal during this period) before the system ended in 1981. The Universal system's representative in New York, Eleanor Kilgallen (sister of Dorothy Kilgallen), cast Cattrall in numerous television guest-star roles. One of the first jobs Kilgallen got her was in a 1977 episode of Quincy, M.E. starring Jack Klugman, whom Kilgallen also represented.

In 1978, Cattrall played the house guest of a murderous psychologist in an episode of Columbo, and was in "Blindfold", an episode of the 1970s action series Starsky & Hutch, in which Starsky (played by Paul Michael Glaser) is grief-stricken because he accidentally blinded Cattrall's character, young artist Emily Harrison, by a shot of his gun. She appeared in The Bastard (1978) and The Rebels (1979), two television miniseries based on the John Jakes novels of the same names. In 1979, she played the role of Gabrielle White on The Incredible Hulk and would go down in television Hulk lore as one of the few characters who knew David Banner (alter ego of the title character) was alive and was the creature. Her work in television paid off and she quickly made the transition to cinema. She appeared opposite Jack Lemmon in his Oscar-nominated film Tribute (1980), and in Crossbar, the film about a high jumper who loses his leg and still participates in the Olympic trials, with Cattrall's help. The following year, she appeared in Ticket to Heaven.

In 1981, Cattrall played PE teacher Miss Honeywell in Porky's, followed three years later by a role in Police Academy. In 1985, she starred in three films: Turk 182, City Limits and Hold-Up, the last with French star Jean-Paul Belmondo. In 1986, she played Kurt Russell's love interest in the action film Big Trouble in Little China. In 1987, her lead role in the cult comedy film Mannequin proved a huge success with audiences. One of her best-known film roles is that of Lieutenant Valeris in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country; Cattrall assisted in developing the character by designing her own hairstyle and even helped come up with the name. Aside from her film work, Cattrall is also a stage actress, with performances in Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge and Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters and Wild Honey to her credit. In addition, she can be heard reading the poetry of Rupert Brooke on the CD Red Rose Music SACD Sampler Volume One.

In 1997, she was cast in Sex and the City, Darren Star's series which was broadcast on HBO. As Samantha Jones, Cattrall gained international recognition. She capitalized on her success by appearing in steamy television commercials promoting Pepsi One. Sex and the City ran for six seasons and ended as a weekly series in spring 2004 with 10.6 million viewers. Cattrall reprised the role of Samantha Jones in the 2008 Sex and the City film, as well as the 2010 sequel Sex and the City 2. For her role on the television series, she was nominated for five Emmy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards, winning one in 2002. She also won two ensemble Screen Actors Guild Awards, shared with her co-stars Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon, although she later revealed she never got along with them. She was ranked number eight in TV Guides 50 sexiest stars of all-time list in 2005. In 2008 she was honoured by the Cosmopolitan UK Ultimate Women Of The Year Awards with the Ultimate Icon Award. She was also awarded the NBC Universal Canada Award of Distinction at the 2008 Banff World TV Festival.

In 2005, she appeared in the Disney film Ice Princess, in which she played Tina Harwood, ice skating coach of the film's lead character. She portrayed Claire, a paralysed woman who wants to die, in the West End drama revival of Whose Life Is It Anyway?. She appeared to rave reviews in a 2006 West End production of David Mamet's The Cryptogram at the Donmar Warehouse in London. She appeared in a number of British television commercials for Tetley Tea from 2005, as well as ads for Bacardi's Island Breeze cocktails. In 2006, a commercial for Nissan cars, which featured Cattrall as Samantha Jones, was withdrawn from New Zealand television, apparently because of complaints about its innuendo. She later starred alongside Brendan Gleeson in John Boorman's film The Tiger's Tail (2006), a black comedy that focuses on the impact of the Celtic Tiger economy on Irish people. On ITV, she starred alongside David Haig, Daniel Radcliffe and Carey Mulligan in My Boy Jack, the story of author Rudyard Kipling's search for his son lost in the First World War.

2010s–2019

Cattrall played Amelia Bly in Roman Polanski's well-received The Ghost Writer (2010) and voiced the character Dee in the Canadian adult animated sitcom Producing Parker, the latter, for which she was awarded a Gemini for Best Performance in an Animated Program or Series. Cattrall has a star on Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto. While filming Sex and the City 2 in Marrakesh, she took part in a seminar, 'Being directed' with director John Boorman as part of the third edition of the Arts in Marrakech Festival. Cattrall acted opposite Matthew Macfadyen in a 2010 revival of Noël Coward's play Private Lives at the Vaudeville Theatre on London's West End, for which she received a Whats on Stage nomination for Best Actress." In the same year, Cattrall starred as Gloria Scabius (alongside Macfadyen once again) in Channel 4 adaptation of William Boyd's novel Any Human Heart.

Cattrall played Cleopatra in a 2010 production of Antony and Cleopatra, directed by Janet Suzman, opposite Jeffery Kissoon as Anthony, in Liverpool at the Playhouse, with a subsequent revival at Chichester Festival Theatre (with Michael Pennington as Anthony) in 2012. In 2010, Cattrall was named an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University in recognition of her contributions to the dramatic arts. In 2011, Cattrall reprised her role as Amanda in a production of Private Lives opposite Canadian actor Paul Gross in Toronto and on Broadway. The New York Times theatre critic raved about Cattrall's performance and she received a Drama League Award nomination. That year, Cattrall also appeared in Uptown Downstairs Abbey, the Comic Relief parody of the historical television dramas Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs. Playing Lady Grantham, she starred alongside Jennifer Saunders, Joanna Lumley, Victoria Wood, Harry Enfield, Patrick Barlow, Dale Winton, Olivia Colman, Tim Vine, Simon Callow, Michael Gambon and Harry Hill.

In 2013, Cattrall starred in the Old Vic's production of Tennessee Williams's Sweet Bird of Youth, directed by Olivier Award-winner Marianne Elliott. In 2014, she starred in and executive produced HBO Canada's Sensitive Skin, an adaptation of the 2005 British series. In 2015, the show was nominated for an International Emmy Award. The show was nominated for numerous Canadian Screen Awards with Cattrall receiving a nomination in 2017 for her role as Davina Jackson in the series. The show is now available for streaming on Netflix.

Cattrall was originally cast in the title role of Linda in a 2015 play by Penelope Skinner, to be directed by Michael Longhurst and produced at London's Royal Court Theatre. She was forced to drop out of that production a few days before the opening, due to "chronic, debilitating insomnia". She returned to New York and started a program of cognitive behaviour therapy to train herself to be able to sleep better. The therapy was successful; it included developing certain evening rituals, removing electronic devices from her bedroom, and limiting the use of the bed to two activities, one of which would be sleeping. Meanwhile, for the scheduled opening of Skinner's play, actress Noma Dumezweni took over the role to much acclaim and publicity. Cattrall opened up to the BBC Woman's Hour on her insomnia journey and how she was able to manage it. Cattrall later returned that year to guest edit the BBC's Woman's Hour to discuss "Choosing to Be Child Free" and "Being a Parent Without Giving Birth" which raised controversial response and opinions. She was also seen in 2015 on the SkyArts short Ruby Robinson, a physical comedy where Cattrall starred as Ruby, a woman living with a troupe of unusual acrobat helpers, who is taught a valuable lesson by her nephew.

Cattrall took part in the BBC Arts' I'm with the Banned, the flagship event in Belarus Free Theatre's (BFT) tenth-anniversary celebrations. Commissioned by The Space, the concert took place at London's KOKO and was broadcast worldwide. Radical underground company BFT brought together a unique line-up of musicians and performers to stand up for artistic freedom of expression and against injustice.

In 2016, Cattrall starred in the BBC mini-series The Witness for the Prosecution based on the Agatha Christie short story. The celebrated two part mini-series was nominated for a 2017 BAFTA award for "Best Mini-Series." In 2017, Cattrall also joined the cast of the hit Swedish TV show Modus, playing the President of the United States. Modus first aired in Sweden in 2015 and was later broadcast by BBC Four in the UK. The show also airs in Canada, Australia, France and Japan and is handled by FremantleMedia International. From 2018 to 2019, Cattrall starred on the Paramount+ series Tell Me a Story.

2020s–present

In 2020, Cattrall starred on the Fox drama Filthy Rich, where she played Margaret Monreaux, the matriarch of a Southern family which has become mega-rich and famous for creating a wildly successful Christian television network. After her husband dies in a plane crash, Margaret and family are stunned to learn that he fathered three illegitimate children, all of whom are written into his will — threatening their family name and fortune. Cattrall also served as a producer on the series. Cattrall was honoured at the 2020 Atlanta TV festival with the Icon Award for the show.

Development began on a revival of Sex and the City following the cancellation of a third film adaptation. Catrall previously expressed that she did not want to return for the third film due to disagreeing with its planned storylines, involving killing off Mr. Big, and Samantha receiving nude pictures from Miranda's 14-year-old son, Brady. The reboot titled And Just Like That... premiered in 2021. In 2022, Sarah Jessica Parker spoke on The Hollywood Reporter Award Chatter podcast about why Cattrall wasn't asked to be a part of the revival. She stated, "We did not ask her to be part of this because she made it clear that that wasn't something she wanted to pursue, and it no longer felt comfortable for us, and so it didn't occur to us". In 2023, however, Catrall reprised her role as Samantha for a brief cameo for the season 2 finale.

In 2021, Cattrall was cast in the How I Met Your Mother spinoff series, How I Met Your Father led by Hilary Duff, in the pivotal narrator role originated by Bob Saget. The series ran for two seasons. She joined Robert De Niro in the comedy film About My Father (2023) inspired by the life of stand-up comedian Sebastian Maniscalco, who also stars. Cattrall featured prominently in the permanent exhibition Wondrous Place celebrating Liverpool's cultural heritage. In 2022, she starred on the Peacock revival series Queer as Folk. In 2023, Cattrall starred on the Netflix series Glamorous.

Personal life

Cattrall has held dual British and Canadian citizenship for most of her life and became an American citizen in 2020 in order to vote in that year's election. Cattrall does not drink alcohol, saying that, "I'm not a big drinker and when I do, I get a headache."

Family and relationships

In 2009, Cattrall took part in the BBC One documentary series Who Do You Think You Are?. She discovered that her grandfather George Baugh disappeared in 1938, having abandoned his family (including Cattrall's then 8-year-old mother and her two younger sisters) and turned out to have bigamously married his new wife the following year in Tudhoe; he subsequently had another four children. Cattrall was told that Baugh emigrated to Australia in 1961, became a postmaster, retired in 1972, and died in Sydney in 1974. Her mother and aunts had known nothing of their father's life after he left until they heard what the Who Do You Think You Are? researchers had discovered, nor had the family previously seen a clear photograph of him. An edited version of the episode was later shown as a part of the U.S. series of the same name.

On 4 February 2018, Cattrall announced that her brother had disappeared in Alberta. She asked for public help in finding him, and he was found dead several hours later, having taken his own life.

Cattrall has been married four times. Her first marriage, from 1977 to 1979, was to Larry Davis, and was annulled. Her second marriage, from 1982 to 1989, was to Andre J. Lyson; the couple lived in Frankfurt, where she learned to speak German fluently, but she admits she has forgotten much of it. Her third marriage, from 1998 to 2004, was to American audio equipment designer Mark Levinson; the couple co-wrote the book Satisfaction: The Art of the Female Orgasm (2002).

Cattrall briefly dated former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (and in 2016 was misidentified on 60 Minutes, from a 1981 photo, as Margaret, the mother of his sons Justin, Alexander, and Michel). She has also been connected to Brazilian-American actor Daniel Benzali, American musician Gerald Casale, French public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy, and British-Sudanese actor Alexander Siddig. Since 2016, she has been in a relationship with British BBC employee Russell Thomas. Cattrall and Thomas married at the Chelsea Old Town Hall, London on 4 December 2025.

Recognition and philanthropy

Cattrall has been awarded an honorary fellowship from Liverpool John Moores University in 2010, for "outstanding and sustained contributions to the dramatic arts", and an honorary Doctor of Laws (LL.D. h.c.) from the University of British Columbia in 2018, for "her contributions as an activist, advocate and humanitarian".

Cattrall funds an annual bursary at her high school alma mater, Georges P. Vanier Secondary School in Courtenay, British Columbia. The Kim Cattrall Bursary for the Performing Arts awards $3,000 to "applicants seeking post-secondary education and/or vocational training in the performing arts." In 2018, Cattrall joined Dame Judi Dench as an ambassador for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London.

Filmography

Film

Television

Music videos

Theatre

Awards and nominations

References

References

1. (21 August 2021). "Birthdays today". The Times.
2. Miles, Tina. (9 June 2008). "Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall: Why I'm so proud to be a Scouser". [[Liverpool Echo]].
3. England & Wales, Marriage Index, Jul–Aug–Sep 1953, Liverpool, [[Lancashire]], 10d, 1172.
4. (4 February 2018). "Kim Cattrall announces brother's death after earlier plea for information". [[BBC News]].
5. (23 August 2016). "Happy Birthday Kim Cattrall!". [[London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art]].
6. Cattrall, Kim. (18 October 2018). "Happy 50th @ComoxValleySD71! Can't wait to see all the improvements you've made. Here's to another 50 years!".
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12. Rhodes, Ted. (June 2025). "-Kim Cattrall, the Canadian of Sex and the City fame, was the star attraction Monday at the Banff World Television Festival at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. She is pictured doing a round of interviews prior to receiving the NBC Universal Canada Award of Distinction at the festival.".
13. (19 October 2006). "The Cryptogram, Donmar Warehouse, London".
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33. (14 September 2015). "Kim Cattrall: 'There are different ways to be a Mum'".
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35. "I'm with the Banned: Full concert".
36. (26 December 2016). "The Witness for the Prosecution". Mammoth Screen, Agatha Christie Productions, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
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38. (14 February 2018). "Kim Cattrall in 'Modus' is the American president we need".
39. Tartaglione, Nancy. (1 March 2017). "Kim Cattrall To Play POTUS In Swedish Crime Series 'Modus'".
40. Andreeva, Nellie. (25 February 2019). "Kim Cattrall To Star In Tate Taylor's Fox Southern Drama Pilot 'Filthy Rich'".
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42. (25 February 2020). "Line up for 2020 aTVfest Atlanta!".
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49. (21 September 2020). "Kim Cattrall Says She Became an American Citizen 'So I Could Vote'".
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51. [https://www.cbc.ca/strombo/videos/show-clip/my-defining-moment-kim-cattrall-shopping MY DEFINING MOMENT: KIM CATTRALL ON HOW SHOPPING SAVED HER LIFE]
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59. "Kim Cattrall Opens Up About Boyfriend Russell Thomas: 'He Was Worth Waiting for'".
60. (4 December 2025). "Kim Cattrall Marries Russell Thomas in Intimate, Elegant London Wedding Ceremony (Exclusive)".
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