Kim Cattrall wows London critics in role as faded star

Canadian-raised actress Kim Cattrall is the toast of London for her role as an aging film star in Tennessee Williams play Sweet Bird of Youth, which opened Thursday at the Old Vic.

The British-born, B.C.-raised actress who played fun-loving Samantha Jones on Sex and the City is now 56 and admits her stage role as a faded Hollywood star made her feel "vulnerable."

Williams’ character Alexandra Del Lago has been on a binge since her latest movie tanked, and we meet her after she’s picked up a gigolo to help her forget her troubles — Chance Wayne, played by 26-year-old Broadway star Seth Numrich. The role requires Cattrall, who played a much younger woman in Noel Coward's Private Lives in Toronto just two years ago, to emphasize the declines that come with age. 

London critics seemed to believe Cattrall has stepped up to the role.

"Kim Cattrall seems to have cornered the market in raddled, imperiously camp divas," wrote Paul Taylor of the Independent newspaper.

"Cattrall's Del Lago oscillates superbly between hard-bitten, grande dame put-downs, hyper-ventilating panic and a certain tender fellow-feeling for this 29-year-old failure who is making his own doomed attempt at a comeback in his hometown," Taylor wrote.

Cattrall in 'incendiary form'

The Telegraph’s Charles Spencer said Cattrall was in "incendiary form."

"Wonderfully, even at her lowest ebb Catrall also suggests the grandiosity of a Hollywood star and her put downs of her devious lover are superbly assured and witty," he wrote.

The Guardian critic Michael Billington was not keen on Williams' play, dismissing it as an "overheated melodrama" but he had kudos for the cast.

"The best part of the play is the early bedroom scene between the zonked out Del Lago and the self-seeking Chance," he wrote.

"It is an encounter that gives the excellent Cattrall an opportunity to show the movie star's multiple contradictions. Cattrall displays a fear of solitude, a whim of iron, a hunger for the consolation of sex and an acidic wit. Informed by Chance that he was always the best-looking guy in town, she crisply asks ‘How large is this town?’"

Relates to role

Old Vic artistic director Kevin Spacey says he has been asking Cattrall to take the role in Sweet Bird of Youth for three or four years.

Since the end of Sex and the City, the actress has pursued stage roles in Toronto, London and New York.

In an interview with the BBC, Cattrall said she is well aware of the youth-obsessed attitudes in Hollywood.

Women her age often struggle with  "feeling that you're still valid and you're still attractive and you still have something to say - that time has not passed you by," she said.

"These are messages and things that I'm dealing with in real life, not just on the stage. So they resonate for me in a very specific way," she said. "It's a great challenge, and I felt very vulnerable playing it and going there."

Sweet Bird of Youth plays at the Old Vic theatre in London's West End until Aug. 31.