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Watch a 23-year-old Kim Cattrall explain how she made it in showbiz

Sex and the City's first episode was 18 years away, it would be a whole six years before we'd have Big Trouble in Little China, and her (imaginary) son, the Prime Minister of Canada, was still wearing Star Wars pyjamas. But as Kim Cattrall told CBC on this day in 1980, her career had never been better.

(Imaginary) son Justin Trudeau was only eight years old when Kim Cattrall appeared on CBC

Kim Cattrall appeared on CBC Television on this day in 1980. Just 23 years old, the future star of Sex and the City was in Toronto filming Tribute with Jack Lemmon. (CBC Digital Archives)

Sex and the City's first episode was 18 years away, it would be a whole six years before we'd have Big Trouble in Little China, and her (imaginary) son, the future Prime Minister of Canada, was still wearing Star Wars pyjamas.

But as Kim Cattrall told CBC on this day in 1980, her career had never been better. 

"I'm the best place I could be right now, the best place," said Cattrall, the March 25 guest on CBC Television's The Bob McLean Show.

That week, she'd star in a new TV movie, The Gossip Columnist, and the actress, then just 24, was in Toronto filming Tribute with Jack Lemmon, a Broadway adaptation directed by Bob Clark, who'd go on to cast her in Porky's

"All the hard work has paid off," says a 23-year-old Cattrall in an interview that runs down the story of how she went from Vancouver Island to New York to the set of Starsky and Hutch. And her story begins at the beginning, as Cattrall reveals the role that was her first big break in the industry. 

"I was 10 years old when I started," Cattrall reveals. It was a "school play called Piffle, It's Only a Sniffle and I played a little cold germ with little feathers on my back."

The full interview is posted below.

For more throwbacks like this one, visit the CBC Digital Archives.