Video “Sex”rospective: Kim Cattrall

Everybody knows that Samantha Jones, the high-powered man-eating publicist, is the real reason Sex and the City was such a talked-about show. Her candid sexuality and constant detonation of the gender double-standards around it gave the series its vitality and topicality. Without her, the show would likely just be cloying Carrie Bradshaw spouting off random observations and hemming and hawing around Mr. Big. But there’s more to Kim Cattrall than just one particular cougar. Take a look through her career and see for yourself.

You may remember her as the hot young cadet Karen Thompson that Steve Guttenberg’s Mahoney was doggedly chasing after in the first Police Academy flick. She was on the other side of the law as well in Turk 182, where she was helping Timothy Hutton engage in several acts of civil disobedience to shame Mayor Robert Culp into helping out his hospitalized firefighter brother Robert Urich.

John Carpenter’s quirky classic Big Trouble in Little China should be one of the first things people think of when they think of Kim Cattrall. Kurt Russell’s bombastic Jack Burton never could say good-bye, even though he was warned that she was big trouble.

There’s a taste of that insatiable Samantha within her featured in Masquerade, which you can watch for free in its entirety here on Fancast, although a Google image search with the safe-search turned off might show you everything you need to convince yourself to watch this Rob Lowe film. Then it’s back to the academy - this time, Honeymoon Academy, where she’s a secret agent who gets pulled back in just when she thought she was out!

It’s something Samantha might do if she was feeling particularly accommodating in the bedroom, but you can see her as a Vulcan in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Further along the kinkwalk is Double Vision, where she plays a pair of freaky twins - one of whom decides to assume the life of the other after her death.

Things got a bit dicey when she teamed up with Rutger Hauer for some monster-hunting in Split Second - nothing could sum it up better than the film’s tagline: “They’ve seen the future, and now they have to kill it!” But then she went right back to Samanthaland with Live Nude Girls, which is about a group of women getting together to talk about sex all the time. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Kim’s had some strange roles in her career. Her stint as a bloodsucker fighting Van Helsing’s gangbangers in Modern Vampires can’t be considered any weirder than playing Britney Spears’ mom in Crossroads. Let’s hope Britney’s aware that it was only in the movies, and that Samantha Jones isn’t actually her real mom.

But if you’re really in need of some actual Samantha, check out how she manages to talk about her sex life while working around a 3-year-old at the table, or just get a retrospective of her love life. Then check Kim out at the London premiere of the movie and see just what it is she wore.