Kim Cattrall loves being on top. With Sex and The City snagging a Golden Globe as TV’s best comedy and having made the tightrope transition from cult favorite to bona fide smash, the 45 year-old actress is reveling in accolades and attention from the HBO signature show. And why not? No overnight success—”There’s no such thing,” she says—Cattrall, one of the youngest students ever to graduate from New York’s American Academy of Dramatic Arts, toiled for a quarter century in mostly thankless, straight-to-video flicks that hardly showcased her comedic talent and flawless timing.
Sure, a hint of things to come simmered in Police Academy and Mannequin. But no one, especially Cattrall herself, envisioned how her role as Samantha Jones—ravenous man-eater and supremely self-confident if precariously aging swinging single—would make her a star and catapult her into the symbol of post-feminist sexual bravado. “As an actress, it’s so rare to find a role written about a woman who’s so free,” Cattrall says.
Her size-up: “Samantha is about freedom. But with her, it’s not even really all about sex. Samantha’s an archetype: Of all the show’s characters, she’s the most complete—she understands life is about accepting and pleasing yourself. As deluded as the others might think she is, she likes the way she is. It works for her. That’s a wonderful message. I love playing her because she’s a very positive character—such a reinforcement for women to not compromise and settle for anything other than what they really want.”
What Cattrall craved besides a thriving acting career—but couldn’t achieve until she met third husband Mark Levinson, a bass player and owner of Red Rose Music on the Upper East Side—was a satisfying sex life. (A first marriage in ‘75 was to a young Canadian actor, a brief second stint in ‘82 to a German architect.) And she candidly confesses she never had an orgasm with a man prior to Levinson.
Having lost her virginity at 15, Cattrall endured three decades of “miserable” sexual experiences. Of her less-than-thrilling partners she says: “Maybe they weren’t ready to give and I wasn’t ready to receive.” Now that Kim’s discovered sexual nirvana, she shares her insights in a bold new tell-all written with Levinson: Satisfaction: The Art of the Female Orgasm (Warner Books). The explicit how-to manual reveals both male and female perspectives and covers (or is it uncovers?) topics from “Ultra-Fast G-Spot Massage” to “Turbo Tongue.”
“As an actress, it’s so rare to find a role written about a woman who’s so free.”
