Kim Cattrall says sayonara to Samantha with dark, desperate new role

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For Kim Cattrall, perhaps the perfect counter programming to “Sex and the City” siren Samantha Jones was her buttoned-up Amelia Bly in Roman Polanski‘s thriller “The Ghost Writer.”

Yet the actress is taking a further departure (or plunge) with her Tribeca Film Festival indie “Meet Monica Velour,” in which she plays an actress turned porn star turned lonely stripper.

Cattrall gained 15 pounds to play the fallen star, a transition she couldn’t bear to see during filming.

“Most of the time as an actress, you want to look desirable, you want to be pretty, you want to be sexy, you want to be lit properly -- whereas here there were days when I didn’t even have any makeup on,” she tells New York magazine.

“There were days when they actually changed the light to make me look harder and more overweight or just [worse].”

“Velour” director Keith Bearden wanted her to gain 35 pounds, but Cattrall couldn’t accommodate his request in enough time.

“Really, just for health reasons I couldn’t do that. I also didn’t have enough time to do it safely with a doctor’s care. But what I did was I put on 15 pounds, and that was comfortable. I could do that. I just didn’t exercise at all.”

-- Matt Donnelly

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