THE first time you meet Kim Cattrall is a series of surprises.

Playing Samantha Jones onscreen, parked next to the petite Sarah Jessica Parker, Cattrall has an unfortunate tendency to look as big as an Audi. So the first thing you notice when she breezes into the room is how trim she really is.

'Samantha's lust is not just sexual; it's for life' Cattrall on her character

Her waist is tiny. She smells good. She is 51, but doesn't look a day over 40.

A slit across the chest of her snug green dress fulfils its duty for provocation, but its horizontal placement well above the strategic area falls on the correct side of discreet. The white stiletto heels add five unneeded inches to her already statuesque height.

Then Cattrall opens her mouth, and it is Samantha's purr you hear.

'To have an American movie where a woman turns 50 and she's celebrating it, I think it's fabulous,' she says with a toss of her hair and that trademark wiggle of her well-aerobicised shoulder.

Sex And The City creator Darren Starr once compared her to legendary comedienne Lucille Ball and called her 'Lucy in Bed'.

'I think it's the ultimate compliment,' Cattrall says. 'Samantha's so in charge of her life, but she also gets pie on her face.'

Since the series ended, she has played a quadriplegic on the London stage, as well as Rudyard Kipling's wife in My Boy Jack, a production for American television channel PBS. There was also the tacky sex manual co-authored with a husband she has since divorced.

'I'm very happy to come back to play this happy clown,' she says.

As written on the page, Samantha might have been a caricature of the older, bolder hussy, but Cattrall plays her with equal parts panache and pathos.

'I think Samantha is responsible for the champagne in the movie,' she says. 'Her lust is not just sexual; it's for life.'

Curiously, there was a time when Cattrall had her doubts. 'When I was first offered the part, I was in my early 40s and I didn't think it was possible for me to keep playing the vamp.'

Now, she acknowledges the difference the vamp made. 'It's incredible. I'm rich and famous. And I know how difficult it is in our business for a woman of a certain age.'

The above article was first published in The Straits Times on May 28, 2008.