When HBO’s Sex and the City aired its final episode just before Valentines Day 2004, whispers of a feature film had long been been rumored. But Hollywood reality elbowed its way into cable-land utopia (contract disputes! irreconcilable visions!), and the dedicated acolytes of Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte were forced to survive on a steady
diet of syndication. Perpetual reruns forbade us to forget, kept that playful jazz theme dancing in our heads, and had Parker’s voice wooing us back. The frolicking foursome finally show up on the big screen this month, with Carrie Bradshaw center and her girls and their guys at her flanks, in Sex and the City. It’s been four long and lonely years, but Sarah Jessica Parker (or “SJP” as her most devoted call her) thinks the timing is perfect. “This way,” she told New York Magazine, “we
really made a better movie.” Hearing Parker’s voice again is like coming home. And for Parker, stepping back into Carrie’s Manolos was a perfect fit.

The gap between closing Carrie’s closet for the 2004 farewell and opening it up again for the film hasn’t been filled with silence or stasis for Parker. When she told Oprah in 2004 that she had chosen to walk away while the show had hit it’s stride, “I think an actor has to do other things, must do other things,” the line wasn’t an excuse; it was a mantra. “One must sometimes do what is scary, do what is risky. I have to try new things, make small movies and big mistakes
and have big victories and small ones.”

Anyone who’s followed, even casually, Parker’s post-Carrie career will know the victories have far outnumbered the mistakes. The 43-year-old actress now boasts her own clothing line (appropriately perky, surprisingly cheap), a fragrance (two) all her own, the title of goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, a harmlessly alluring endorsement for Garnier (when she says “Take care!” one really wants to), a guest appearance on Project Runway, the establishment of her own production company, and a trio of movies that have highlighted the
breadth of her skill. Not a bad run for a girl from Nelsonville, Ohio (population 5,230, or roughly the occupancy of one quarter of Parker’s present Greenwich Village zip code).

The journey from middle-America to mega-successful actor went through Cincinnati and Jersey and was shared with a hybrid family of ten, with seven brothers and sisters sharing space, clothes, and food with Parker. Theater was a passion—and a profession—from an early age, as she brought home paychecks for the family while a young child (when she landed a role in The Innocents, her family moved to New Jersey to support her career, which was somewhat supporting
the family).

“There were times we didn’t have electricity and the phone company would turn off our phone,” Parker told the Calgary Sun. “There were times we didn’t have Christmases and other times we didn’t have birthdays because there was no money. But my parents made certain all my brothers and sisters and I were exposed to the arts. They took us to theatre and enrolled us in dance and music classes.”

Such memories not only fueled Parker’s theatrical ambitions—from the days she starred as a skinny-legged, bony-kneed Annie, singing about “Tomorrow,” to the early television and film opportunities in Footloose and Girls Just Want to Have Fun—they inform all her creative endeavors, most recently her new line of affordable clothing, Bitten. Like everything that Parker does, fashion is personal.

Standing in line at a Steve and Barry’s, waiting for the launch of Parker’s new line, clumps of boomer moms and their tween daughters, camera phones at the ready, all bounce with eager delight—it’s impossible to say which generation is more excited for the appearance of their own American idol. The moment embodies so much of Parker’s paradoxical appeal: a Hollywood princess with a Village address, Parker is a dignified bohemian, both young and
seasoned, innocent and world-wise. This enigma makes her so
interesting, and that she manages it with such authenticity—and that she uses the word “swell” with perfect sincerity—makes her something one becomes only by nature: likable. That so many women want to be in her shoes has as much to do with her soft presence and glowing assurance as it does her designer footwear.

But she’d be the first to tell you that her real life is not all Manolos and Manhattans. For a living icon, Sarah Jessica Parker bears no signs of fame’s corruption, and seems immune somehow to the virus of self-importance. In public, she is kind; in interviews, intelligent; with fans, nearly ebullient. She picks up pork chops at her local Gourmet Garage, sits summer Saturdays on her stoop, and asks about neighbors’ sick children. She gets her feelings hurt when a national men’s magazine names her the Unsexiest Woman Alive (“It really hurt me,” she told the Post), but she doesn’t slip into snarki-
ness or collapse into cynicism. She marshals a respectable vocabulary, likes obscure novels and classic films.

And she speaks candidly about her imperfections in a way that makes you believe she’s confronted her demons and shouted them down.

“I never expected this to happen. I didn’t want to do a television series ... but this very extraordinary wonderful highlight happened and I just think it’s been great and I feel very privileged.” That highlight was a character named Carrie in a show called Sex, and the extraordinary wonder was the 50 Emmy nods, 24 Golden Globe nominations, and 3 consecutive Globe wins for SJP.

“When we came back to shoot the movie, I was intellectually prepared, I thought, for some level of interest on the streets, but I don’t think I had any understanding of the degree to which people’s interest would be.” Several days filming was delayed due to crowd concerns, and elaborate trickery was involved to throw the gawkers and stalkers off the scent of the shoot. The final result is a film whose characters are lovably familiar (in the film’s early moments of
wedding chatter, Big says to Carrie, with his charmingly crooked mouth and a somewhat mystified squint, “Shall we get you a diamond?” “No,” Carrie returns, “just get me a really big closet.”), but whose storyline has, remarkably, remained secret. Parker is marvelously equivocal: “It’s fun to dance around that specificity,” she says playfully, revealing only that “there’s lots of ‘I’m sorry’s.’ People make a lot of mistakes in this movie.” The movie itself is a work of wonder, however, and after its release nationwide Parker will take a break from the city life, retreating to her quiet house in Amagansett,
trading urban din for country sunsets.

With all the success of Sex, it’s clear that the real “wonderful extraordinary highlight” is Parker’s off-screen family. She lights up when speaking of her husband, Tony-award winning actor Matthew Broderick, whom she married 11 years ago. “He’s still the person that makes me laugh harder than anybody,” she says. “I think he’s very special—one of a kind actually. He’s very bright, a devoted father,” adding in a characteristic moment of gleeful understatement, “and I think he’s really swell.” The swellest part? The couple’s son, James Wilkie, only five years old but still powerful enough to change Parker’s life: “It’s taken some time for [Matthew and I] to say, ‘oh, I can’t go; I can’t go to dinner with you. I want to
put my son to bed.’ It’s a whole new way of thinking. And it’s
spectacular and I’m privileged to get to experience it.”

And to experience it in New York is as perfect as she can imagine. About her city, she waxes nearly as affective: “I am a city person. I love concrete, I love architecture, and I love the sound of cabs. I just wouldn’t go anywhere else. It’s just simply who we are.”

In the city she belongs in, and a career she’s excelling in, Parker is comfortable looking at the future: “If I had my druthers, I think I’d like to do one movie a year, and stay at home with my son a lot more, and find things I’m really excited about. I really just want some kind of simple satisfaction. And I think that’s possible.”

And what will happen to our beloved Carrie Bradshaw? We can only hope she fares as well as Parker, and finds herself caught between her three best lovers: her man, her friends, and her city. “Life doesn’t always turn out to be your fantasy,” says Carrie in the film. “That’s why you need friendships that are real to get you through it all.”

[HS]