Kim Cattrall

Kim Victoria Cattrall is a British and Canadian actress born on 21 August 1956 in the Mossley Hill area of Liverpool, England, to secretary Gladys Shane and construction engineer Dennis Cattrall. When Cattrall was three months old, her family emigrated to Canada and settled in Courtenay, British Columbia. At age eleven she returned to Liverpool after her grandmother fell ill, during which time she took acting examinations at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. She returned to Canada after one year and subsequently moved to New York City at sixteen for her first acting role. Cattrall has two sisters and a brother, Christopher Cattrall, who was born in 1963 and died in 2018.

Cattrall began her professional career following her 1972 graduation from Georges P. Vanier Secondary School, after which she attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. Upon graduating, she signed a five-year film deal with director Otto Preminger and made her screen debut in his 1975 action thriller Rosebud. Universal Studios subsequently bought out that contract, and Cattrall became one of the final participants in Universal's contract player system before it ended in 1981. Through the studio's New York representative Eleanor Kilgallen, she was placed in numerous television guest roles, including a 1977 episode of Quincy, M.E. and a 1978 episode of Columbo. She also appeared in the television miniseries The Bastard (1978) and The Rebels (1979), both based on John Jakes novels, and played Gabrielle White in a 1979 episode of The Incredible Hulk.

Her transition to film accelerated in the early 1980s. She appeared opposite Jack Lemmon in the Oscar-nominated Tribute (1980) and in Ticket to Heaven (1981), then gained wider recognition playing PE teacher Miss Honeywell in Porky's (1982) and appearing in Police Academy (1984). In 1985 she starred in three films: Turk 182, City Limits, and Hold-Up, the last alongside French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo. She played Kurt Russell's love interest in Big Trouble in Little China (1986) and took the lead role in the cult comedy Mannequin (1987). One of her most recognized film performances is Lieutenant Valeris in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), a character she helped develop by designing her own hairstyle and contributing to the character's name.

Cattrall's stage work spans several decades and multiple continents. Her Broadway career ran from 1986 to 2011, during which she appeared in Wild Honey (1986) and starred in Private Lives. She also performed in Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge and Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters. In 1993 she appeared in Miss Julie at the McCarter Theatre. Her West End credits include a 2006 production of David Mamet's The Cryptogram at the Donmar Warehouse, a revival of Whose Life Is It Anyway? in which she played Claire, a paralysed woman who wants to die, and a 2010 revival of Noël Coward's Private Lives at the Vaudeville Theatre opposite Matthew Macfadyen. Also in 2010, she performed in Antony and Cleopatra at the Liverpool Playhouse, and in 2013 she appeared in Sweet Bird of Youth at The Old Vic.

In 1997 Cattrall was cast as Samantha Jones in Darren Star's Sex and the City, which premiered on HBO in 1998 and ran for six seasons, concluding in spring 2004 with 10.6 million viewers for its finale. The role earned her five Primetime Emmy Award nominations and four Golden Globe Award nominations; she won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in 2002. She also received two ensemble Screen Actors Guild Awards shared with co-stars Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis, and Cynthia Nixon. Cattrall reprised the role in the feature films Sex and the City (2008) and Sex and the City 2 (2010), and made a cameo appearance in the revival series And Just Like That... in 2023.

Beyond Sex and the City, Cattrall appeared in Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer (2010) alongside Brendan Gleeson in John Boorman's The Tiger's Tail (2006), and in the ITV film My Boy Jack alongside David Haig, Daniel Radcliffe, and Carey Mulligan. She voiced the character Dee in the Canadian animated sitcom Producing Parker, receiving a Gemini Award for Best Performance in an Animated Program or Series for that work. From 2014 to 2016 she starred in and served as executive producer of HBO Canada's Sensitive Skin, earning a 2016 Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy Series. Subsequent television work includes Tell Me a Story (Paramount+, 2018–2019), Filthy Rich (Fox, 2020), Queer as Folk (Peacock, 2022), the role of future Sophie on Hulu's How I Met Your Father (2022–2023), and Glamorous (Netflix, 2023). Cattrall holds a star on Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto.