The edgy one from Sex and the City is in the West End in Private Lives. But do Samantha and Noel Coward mix?

So, where does Samantha Jones end and Kim Cattrall start? Has the 53-year old actress ever felt herself blurring into the vivacious, voracious character she has played, on and off, for more than a decade? “No. Never. It’s such a clear definition,” she shakes her head. “Totally clear. It ends when they say ‘cut!’” Really? To the casual observer, there have been plenty of times since Sex and the City exploded all over our screens in 1998 when it has been tricky to draw a line between the actress and the fictional Manhattan man-eater.

As Samantha sauce-potted her way around New York, bedding toy-boy models and millionaire executives, dispensing X-rated advice over brunch and, as a naked human sushi platter in one of the movie’s funniest scenes, “getting wasabi in places you should never get wasabi,” Kim was busily racking up her own column inches. There are her three marriages, the book, Satisfaction: The Art of the Female Orgasm, she wrote with her third, now ex-, husband Mark Levinson and her latest, now defunct, relationship with Alan Wyse, a chef 20 years her junior. Then there are other appearances which deliberately play on her glamazon/siren image: the Nissan advert banned in New Zealand for being too risqué (“I’ve just had the ride of my life…”); a television documentary, Sexual Intelligence, which saw her dancing with glee on the 26ft phallus of the Cerne Abbas giant; her semi-naked publicity campaign to save Diana and Actaeon for the nation (cue “Nice Titians, Kim” headlines); and, my favourite, her guest spot on Sesame Street where she proclaimed the “word on the street” to be (what else?) “fabulous”. So Samantha, darling.

There’s a hint of Samantha, too about her upcoming film roles – as the formidable PA (and mistress) to the prime minister in the Robert Harris thriller The Ghost and as a fading glamour girl in Meet Monica Velour. First, though, is a run on the West End stage as fiery divorcee Amanda in Private Lives. Given the hysteria which tracks her every step in Manhattan, I wonder whether she’s experiencing a similar reaction over here. “I don’t really feel like they’re reacting to me because they don’t know who I am,” she corrects me, stiffly. “They’re reacting to projected images, and my work – not to me. It’s a little overwhelming. The thing I really love about London is that I can merge a bit”.

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