Kim Cattrall Says Acting Beats Any “Sexual Climactic Experience”

Kim Cattrall famously turned down Sex and the City four times, before finally getting on board to play Samantha Jones.

But Cattrall on Saturday recalled her first acting audition after leaving theater school at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City had her feeling dread and terror. “To go out to the real world, where people could say no, was terrifying to me,” she said while discussing her journey as an actor at Tribeca Festival Lisboa in Lisbon, Portugal.

Well before Cattrall played Jones on Sex and the City, the HBO sitcom that ran from 1998 to 2004, she auditioned for early roles that were mostly victimized women characters. That contrasted with her earlier experience in live theater where more powerful women characters were more available.

“I was so disappointed that they were asking so little of me, other than to cry or to be hurt or emotionally unstable or drunk,…