Kim Cattrall: ‘Misogyny isn’t something that happens occasionally, I experience it every day’

At the 16th GLAMOUR Women of the Year Awards, in partnership with Samsung, we’re honouring those women who aren’t afraid to challenge the status quo and reshape the world. From activism to acting, our winners are working across a variety of industries to make the world a better, more equal place.

Taking home the Screen Icon Award is the force that is Kim Cattrall. Here, she speaks to GLAMOUR’s European Editorial Director, Deborah Joseph, about the naked truth of being a woman in Hollywood, the art of saying ‘No’ and the advice she would give her younger self…

I’m 15 minutes late for my Zoom date with Kim Cattrall. The clocks went back the night before we speak and the time was put an hour late in my diary. She is unphased by my tardiness, relaxed and instantly smiling and laughing, “I said to Russ [Russell Thomas, her boyfriend of six years – they met at the BBC and liked each other. He followed her on Twitter. She followed back and the rest is history] that’s what must have happened,” she laughs openly, looking in the direction of Russ who remains out of sight, but feels omnipresent in our chat. 

She’s sitting at a table in her New York apartment, wearing a round-necked purple sweater, her skin flawless, her hair, that familiar, swishy honey-blonde layered bob. She’s in a great mood. “You probably don’t remember,” I tell her, “but we’ve met before, 17 years ago, when I interviewed you for the first ever Women of the Year Awards in 2004.” She won US TV Actress of the Year; Sex And The City had just come to an end. 

“WE’RE STILL HERE,” she guffaws, throwing her head back and her arms out towards me. Her energy is infectious. We are indeed still here: me now as European Director and Editor-in-Chief of GLAMOUR, her now as GLAMOUR’s Screen Icon of the Year, having become a spokesperson not just for sexual liberation, but also for the power of staying unapologetically herself. 

She’s an icon, her inimitable career aside, because Kim is one of those unique women who transcends age, whose positive influence both on and off screen for the past almost 50 years has crossed generations to inspire, influence and breakdown the taboos for women around sexual desire and behaviour, being child-free and standing up for herself against the odds.

As Samantha Jones in Sex And The City, she played one of the most groundbreaking and feminist characters of modern times, showing that women could openly explore and celebrate their sexual desire without caring what other people thought. It seems ludicrous now, but before Samantha, I can’t remember a single female TV character who was celebrated for being sexually liberated and happily single without being punished in some way. She undoubtedly paved the way for characters in shows such as Girls and I Hate Suzie, among others.

A lot has changed for women in Hollywood during the time she’s been working as an actor, rising to prominence in the early 1980s in films such as Police Academy and Mannequin, and acting alongside Tom Hanks in The Bonfire Of The Vanities – and this has also been accelerated by the #MeToo movement. As she looks back at her incredible career, where she’s received five Emmy nominations and won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress, did she ever experience misogyny and does she feel that’s now changed in her more recent roles in Filthy Rich and Queer As Folk?