Actor Kim Cattrall is best known for playing the confident, empowered PR expert Samantha Jones on HBO. Sex and the city. Over the course of the six seasons and nearly 100 episodes of the series, Cattrall has been nominated for several Emmys and Golden Globes, plus numerous other honors. Despite Cattrall’s many public persona and more than 50 years on film and TV, many fans are still amazed to learn about the secret background of the celebrity and the surprising truth about her real accent.
Fans are surprised to hear that Cattrall was not born in America
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Despite Cattrall’s all-American background story Sex and the city Jones is said to have come from a working-class background, worked as a teenager at Dairy Queen and lived in New York City for decades – the actor was not actually 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 twice [British-Canadian] citizenship, ”reports The Guardian.
According to Cattrall herself in an Instagram post, she had no citizenship in the United States until the fall of 2020. Cattrall lives in Canada from three months to 11 years of age, IMDb explains, after which the actor returned to the UK after going to school at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. When Cattrall was 16, she was studying in high school.
Cattrall holds a scholarship to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. The celebrity’s ongoing travels between Canada, the UK and the US may explain why so many fans never knew her real background. And it could also explain Cattrall’s true accent, which depends on her roles and who she’s talking to.
Cattrall says she had to practice her American accent
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“Cattrall has maintained very close ties with Liverpool and her family there and she does a wonderful accent,” said The Guardian. Scouse is the specific English dialect and accent used in Liverpool, and the BBC has explained that it is a very distinctive, “immediately recognizable” accent that is a mixture of Irish and Welsh influences.
Yet in most of Cattrall’s roles she hides her British accent. And according to her, it takes a lot of practice to do it successfully. “I do not call home that much because I am starting to sound American again,” she quoted in the Digital Spy. ‘I worked at British Accents all my life. But I worked pretty hard to get it right. […] As you can see, I do not speak like Samantha or act like Samantha unless I am paid to do so. ‘
Cattrall’s British accent appears in her British films
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In her interview with The Guardian, Cattrall says she wishes some directors would ask her to use her right accent. But you can still hear it moving in her film and television characters, especially when she’s working with a British cast. A prominent example is the T of 2010he ghostwriter, 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 with a British accent … is shocking at first, “shows the Wall Street Journal. Another European film where you can get a look at Cattrall’s British roots includes 2006’s The tiger tail.