Actress Kim Cattrall is best known for playing the confident and skilled public relations expert Samantha Jones on the HBO show. Sex and the City. Throughout the series’ six seasons and nearly 100 episodes, Cattrall has been nominated for several Emmys and Golden Globes, in addition to several other awards. Despite Cattrall’s very public personality and over 50 years in film and TV, many fans are still surprised to learn about the celebrity’s secret past and the surprising truth about his real-life accent.
Fans are surprised to learn that Cattrall was not born in America
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Despite Cattrall’s all-American backstory Sex and the City character – Jones is said to have come from a working-class background, worked at Dairy Queen as a teenager and lived in New York City for decades – the actor was not really born in the United States. In fact, until recently, Cattrall was not even an American citizen. “Cattrall was born in Liverpool [England], moved to Canada when she was a baby, and has double [British-Canadian] citizenship, ”reported The Guardian.
According to Cattrall herself in an Instagram post, she had no citizenship in the United States until the fall of 2020. Cattrall lived in Canada from three months to 11 years old, explains IMDb, after which the actor returned to the UK to go to school at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. When Cattrall was 16, she graduated from high school.
Cattrall won a scholarship to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. The celebrity’s constant travels between Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States may explain why so many fans have never known their true origin. And it can also explain Cattrall’s real accent, which decreases and decreases depending on her roles and who she’s talking to.
Cattrall says he had to practice his American accent
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“Cattrall has maintained very close ties with Liverpool and his family there and she has a great horrible accent,” notes The Guardian. Scouse is the specific English dialect and accent used in Liverpool, with the BBC explaining that it is a very distinct, “instantly recognizable” accent, which is a mix of Irish and Welsh influences.
Still, in most of Cattrall’s roles, she hides her British accent. And she says that to do this successfully, it takes a lot of practice. “I’m not calling home like I used to because I’m starting to sound American again,” she told Digital Spy. “I’ve been around British accents my whole life. But I worked hard to get it right. […] As you can see, I don’t speak like Samantha or act like Samantha unless I get paid for it. “
Cattrall’s British accent appears in his British films
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In her interview with The Guardian, Cattrall says that she would like some directors to have asked her to use her real accent. But you can still hear it seeping into her personas in film and television, especially if she is working with a British cast. A prominent example is the 2010 teehe ghost writer, a British film directed by the controversial European director Roman Polanski.
In it, Cattrall plays a personal assistant to the former British Prime Minister played by Pierce Brosnan. “To see [Cattrall] in a political thriller, speaking in a British accent … is initially shocking, ”says the Wall Street Journal. Another European film where you can catch a glimpse of Cattrall’s British roots includes 2006 The tiger’s tail.