Parker: "Six Weeks to New 'Sex' Movie"

Parker: "Six Weeks to New 'Sex' Movie"

HOLLYWOOD - Sarah Jessica Parker has thrilled Sex and the City fans by confirming the movie adaptation of the hit TV series will start shooting in just six weeks.

The actress admits she and castmates Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon are "deep in prep," but she's refusing to give too much away about the cast and the plot of the much-hyped film.

She says, "We still have some stuff to iron out, silly stuff before a studio says OK. It looks closer to actually happening. It's a dream.

"We know it's (storyline) in the present. All else has been wiped from my memory."

Sarah Jessica Parker

A former child performer who played "Annie" in the hit Broadway musical for two years (1978-80) before segueing smoothly to a busy and varied acting career, Sarah Jessica Parker has worked steadily and demonstrated her range and skill on stage and screens big and small. A petite blonde with flowing curls, bright eyes and a wide smile, Parker saw her image change considerably through the years, from her portrayal of bookish bean-pole Patty Greene on the above-average schoolgirl sitcom "Square Pegs" (CBS, 1982-83) to that of freewheeling relationships columnist Carrie Bradshaw, a single thirtysomething navigating Manhattan's dating jungle, on HBO's acclaimed series "Sex and the City" (1998- )....

Full Biography

A former child performer who played "Annie" in the hit Broadway musical for two years (1978-80) before segueing smoothly to a busy and varied acting career, Sarah Jessica Parker has worked steadily and demonstrated her range and skill on stage and screens big and small. A petite blonde with flowing curls, bright eyes and a wide smile, Parker saw her image change considerably through the years, from her portrayal of bookish bean-pole Patty Greene on the above-average schoolgirl sitcom "Square Pegs" (CBS, 1982-83) to that of freewheeling relationships columnist Carrie Bradshaw, a single thirtysomething navigating Manhattan's dating jungle, on HBO's acclaimed series "Sex and the City" (1998- ). While "Square Pegs" marked Parker's first taste of nationwide notice, she actually made her television debut a decade earlier, with a role as "The Little Match Girl" in an NBC television production. The young actress followed up with stage work, making her debut in "The Innocents" in 1976, directed by Harold Pinter. She followed up with "Annie" after her family relocated to the New York area and played the sister of future "Sex and the City" co-star and fellow Drama Dept. member Cynthia Nixon in the TV-movie "My Body, My Child" (1982) starring Vanessa Redgrave.
Parker made the move to features beginning in 1979, when she appeared in "Rich Kids". Five years later, she took on roles in "Footloose", "Firstborn" and "Somewhere Tomorrow" and continued to appear in TV movies in the interim including co-starring roles in ABC's "The Almost Royal Family" (1984) and CBS' "Going For the Gold: The Bill Johnson Story" (1985). Parker was particularly effervescent in her lead role opposite Helen Hunt as a young teen who wants to enter a dance contest against the wishes of her reactionary father in the musical comedy "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" (1985). She was featured the following year in "Flight of the Navigator", her last film for six years and her last teenage role. Later that year Parker made her first entry into adult roles, cast in the role of newlywed Kay Ericson Gardner, an ebullient young woman who marries into the family around which the NBC miniseries and subsequent weekly drama "A Year in the Life" centered. While the series was critically heralded, it failed to capture a large enough audience for NBC to order a second season. Parker kept busy with telefilms and stage work (including a three character part in Wendy Wasserstein's Off-Broadway hit "The Heidi Chronicles") before landing the role of driven attorney JoAnn Harris on ABC's legal drama "Equal Justice". Like "A Year in the Life", this acclaimed series didn't last beyond its premiere season.

Previously cast mostly as a cerebral or earnest characters, Parker won acclaim for her deftly comic portrayal of the flaky, pirouetting SanDeE*, stealing every scene opposite Steve Martin in "L.A. Story" (1991). She moved up to leading lady status for "Honeymoon in Vegas" (1992), and played the sexiest of three kooky witches in the Disney comic fantasy "Hocus Pocus" (1993). Again proving her versatility, Parker was featured opposite Bruce Willis in the actioner "Striking Distance" and played against Johnny Depp's "Ed Wood" as his leading lady and love interest Dolores Fuller in Tim Burton's affectionate biopic of the odd director. The actress continued on this upward trajectory and had one of her best roles as a young woman afraid of commitment in "Miami Rhapsody" (1995). The following year, she returned to Broadway to co-star with future husband Matthew Broderick in the musical revival "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying". Parker did a spate of film work that saw 1996 release as well, playing Dan Hedaya's obnoxious social climbing girlfriend in "The First Wives Club", a flamboyant TV host in Burton's "Mars Attacks!", the nurse stuck between battling doctors Gene Hackman and Hugh Grant in "Extreme Measures", a single therapist looking for love in "If Lucy Fell", and the daughter of a Jewish publisher in the film version of "The Substance of Fire" (a role which she previously played on stage). She starred in the revival of "Once Upon a Mattress" (1996-1997), enjoying the role although the reviews were lackluster, and returned to features in 1997 with a mirthful role in the comedy "'Til There Was You", the prolific and successful former child actress ironically cast as an unfulfilled and spoiled former child star.

In 1998, Parker returned to series television in the smart HBO comedy "Sex and the City,” earning acclaim for her turn as the staunchly independent but emotionally needy Carrie. Although the series followed a very specific group of women with excessive lifestyles drastically unlike those of the audience, the universal themes of sex, love and friendship struck a familiar chord with viewers, who enjoyed the series' candor and heart. Starring alongside Kim Cattral, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon, Parker excelled as the center of the ensemble, and earned numerous awards nominations for her nuanced portrayal of the extroverted but introspective columnist--she would take home the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2001, and collect Golden Globes for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series Musical or Comedy in 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2004. She would at last win the Emmy for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Comedy in 2004 for the beloved series' final season. Thanks to her trend-setting character's fashion savvy, Parker also become one of Hollywood's hottest style icons of the late 1990s and early 2000s, known for her excellent taste, avant garde accessories and always fabulous footwear. A planned film version of the series was scuttled in 2004, reportedly due to friction with co-star Kim Cattrall.

Less memorable than her TV persona, however, were her big-screen turns during the series' runs, including a stint as Nell Fenwick in the failed live action adaptation of the enduring cartoon "Dudley Do-Right" (1999). Parker was well cast in the ensemble of David Mamet's minor comedy "State and Main" (2000) as a self-obsessed, manipulative actress, followed by a leading turn in the little seen romantic comedy whodunnit “Life Without Dick” (2002), a straight-to-video romantic comedy about a woman who unwittingly falls in love with a hit man (Harry Connick, Jr.) hired to kill her obnoxious boyfriend (Johnny Knoxville). Parker next appeared in “The Family Stone” (2005), playing the high-powered girlfriend of the eldest son in a bohemian family who’s brought to their annual holiday gathering and causes awkwardness, confusion and ultimately hostility.


Kim Cattrall

An attractive, versatile supporting player and occasional lead, Kim Cattrall won attention as the sex-starved coach in the surprise hit teen comedy, "Porky's" (1981) and was excellent as a bitchy socialite opposite Rob Lowe in Bob Swaim's stylish thriller, "Masquerade" (1988), although she may be probably best remembered as the animated alter ego of the titular clotheshorse in the 1987 romantic comedy "Mannequin". With a long list of credits in better forgotten low-budget features, Cattrall did more impressive work on the small screen with roles as the mysterious former lover of James Belushi in the Oliver Stone-produced, "Twin Peaks"-style miniseries, "Wild Palms" (ABC, 1993), a former beauty queen, wife and mother having an affair with the stable boy in the short-lived "Angel Falls" (CBS, 1993) and a fortyish femme fatale PR agent living the high life in NYC on the hit HBO series "Sex and the City" (1998- )....

Full Biography

An attractive, versatile supporting player and occasional lead, Kim Cattrall won attention as the sex-starved coach in the surprise hit teen comedy, "Porky's" (1981) and was excellent as a bitchy socialite opposite Rob Lowe in Bob Swaim's stylish thriller, "Masquerade" (1988), although she may be probably best remembered as the animated alter ego of the titular clotheshorse in the 1987 romantic comedy "Mannequin". With a long list of credits in better forgotten low-budget features, Cattrall did more impressive work on the small screen with roles as the mysterious former lover of James Belushi in the Oliver Stone-produced, "Twin Peaks"-style miniseries, "Wild Palms" (ABC, 1993), a former beauty queen, wife and mother having an affair with the stable boy in the short-lived "Angel Falls" (CBS, 1993) and a fortyish femme fatale PR agent living the high life in NYC on the hit HBO series "Sex and the City" (1998- ).
Born in Liverpool, England, but raised in Canada, Cattrall did some acting as an 11-year in a Liverpool theater during a visit back home. She dropped out of high school at age 16 to move to NYC and try her hand at acting. She became possibly the youngest graduate ever of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and made her professional stage debut in a production of "The Rocky Picture Horror Show". She has since appeared infrequently on stage: she was Masha in a 1985 production of "Three Sisters" and co-starred with Ian McKellen in the unsuccessful Chekhov adaptation "Wild Honey" (1986). Other credits include "The Misanthrope" in 1989 at Chicago's famed Goodman Theatre and the title role of "Miss Julie" (1992) at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey.

A lovely brunette who also made a convincing blonde intermittently throughout her career, Cattrall made her feature film acting debut for producer-director Otto Preminger in "Rosebud" (1975), but it was not until 1980 that she had a truly showy part, that of the young woman hand-picked by Jack Lemmon to bring his stuffy son Robby Benson alive in "Tribute". She followed with a memorable scene amidst smelly gym socks in "Porky's", was among the ensemble in the first "Police Academy" (1984) and starred opposite Kurt Russell as a sharp lawyer in John Carpenter's "Big Trouble in Little China" (1986). Her spate of unremarkable film work has been punctuated by such memorable work as her turn as the villainous Justine DeWinter in the otherwise uninspired reunion film "The Return of the Musketeers" (1989), Mr. Spock's protege Valeris in "Star Trek IV: The Undiscovered Country" (1991) and the high school friend about to embark on her third marriage in "Live Nude Girls" (1995).

On the small screen, Cattrall won notice as Melanie Adams in the CBS miniseries "Scruples" (1980) and played an aspiring political columnist who ends up writing something else entirely in "The Gossip Columnist" (syndicated, 1980). She kept busy with turns in such forgettable fare as 1984's "Sins of the Past" (ABC) and 1991's "Miracle in the Wilderness" (TNT), but returned with a spark to the role of Susan, the title character's best friend, in "The Heidi Chronicles" (TNT, 1995). Work in the miniseries thrillers "Robin Cook's 'Invasion'" (NBC, 1997) and "Peter Benchley's 'Creature'" (ABC, 1998) kept the alluring actress in the public eye.

Cattrall finally landed a role that made the most of her youthful good looks and onscreen poise and charisma and earned her popularity and critical acclaim: public relations maven Samantha Jones on the racy HBO sitcom "Sex and the City" (1998-2004). The most carnally adventurous of a group of successful NYC professionals, Samantha would have to be played by an exceptionally self-assured performer and Cattrall's strikingly unreserved but polished and skilled portrayal of the straight-talking socialite earned the actress five Emmy nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series (Cattrall never landed the trophy, however, but did take home a 2003 Golden Globe). Easily the show's most outrageous, if sometimes cartoonish, character, Samantha was integral to the show's comedic success, and when Cattrall balked at the big-screen version of the series--officially due to scheduling issues, but reportedly due to friction with Sarah Jessica Parker and her other co-stars and producers--the project was scuttled.

Off the success of the show, Cattrall also landed roles in the features "Baby Geniuses" (1999), which reunited her with "Porky's" director Bob Clark; "15 Minutes" (2001) opposite Robert DeNiro; "The Devil and Daniel Webster" (2001); and, as Britney Spears' neglectful mother, in "Crossroads" (2002). Playing off of her character's seductive reputation, Cattrall also co-wrote the 2002 sex-tip tome Satisfaction: The Art of the Female Orgasm with her then-husband Mark Levinson--ironically, the couple split shortly after the book's publication. She took a role in the Disney film "Ice Princesss" (2005) as a hard-driving ice skating coach with big plans for her daughter--the family-oriented film was the project Cattrall took instead of the "Sex and the City" feature (though Cattrall said she would definitely consider returning to the character should a big screen effort finally come to fruition).



Kristin Davis

A pretty dark-haired performer with an outdoorsy, graceful appeal, actress Kristin Davis first garnered notice with a role on the Fox primetime soap "Melrose Place" before joining the cast of HBO's acclaimed comedy "Sex & the City" in 1998. Born in Colorado and raised in South Carolina, Davis attended school in Rutgers, New Jersey and set out to pursue an acting career in nearby New York City after earning her BFA in theater. While in Manhattan she landed commercial and theater jobs, and won a role in the low-budget horror comedy feature "Doom Asylum" (1987)....

Full Biography

A pretty dark-haired performer with an outdoorsy, graceful appeal, actress Kristin Davis first garnered notice with a role on the Fox primetime soap "Melrose Place" before joining the cast of HBO's acclaimed comedy "Sex & the City" in 1998. Born in Colorado and raised in South Carolina, Davis attended school in Rutgers, New Jersey and set out to pursue an acting career in nearby New York City after earning her BFA in theater. While in Manhattan she landed commercial and theater jobs, and won a role in the low-budget horror comedy feature "Doom Asylum" (1987). Davis, who had recurring roles on the daytime dramas "Another World" (NBC) and "General Hospital" (ABC), made her TV-movie debut in 1991's "N.Y.P.D. Mounted" (CBS) and had an early series role that same year on the ABC crime drama "Pros & Cons". Before winning the role on "Melrose Place", the actress' credits were somewhat sporadic, but included guest appearances on "The Larry Sanders Show" (HBO, 1993), "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" (CBS, 1994) and "ER" (NBC, 1995). Also in 1995, Davis had a small but pivotal role that outfitted her as a bald, spotted alien in the TV-movie follow-up "Alien Nation: Body and Soul" (Fox) and returned to the big screen with a cameo as a tennis attendant in the comedy "Nine Months".
Playing against type as cool sophisticate/scheming maniac Brooke Armstrong on "Melrose Place", Davis impressed the producers enough that her recurring role in the 1994-95 season became a regular one from 1995-1996. A well-mannered rich girl who snags resident nice guy Billy Campbell (Andrew Shue), and plots to keep him no matter what the cost, Brooke often faced off against rival and "Melrose Place" mainstay Allison (who was in fact her stepmother). The confrontations and outrageous manipulations between these two angel-faced women made for a highly entertaining ride. Following her dramatic onscreen departure from "Melrose Place", Davis starred in the NBC TV-movie "The Ultimate Lie" in 1996, and stayed with the network, taking 1997 guest roles on "The Single Guy", and a memorable two-episode recurring stint on "Seinfeld" as "Toothbrush Girl", a romantic interest of Jerry's whose toothbrush is inadvertently dropped in the toilet, leading to machinations by germ-phobic Jerry to steer clear of her mouth. That same year she starred as a woman with psychic abilities who can predict violent crimes in the ABC TV-movie thriller "A Deadly Vision".

In 1998, Davis returned to the big screen with an appearance in "Seinfeld" creator Larry David's "Sour Grapes". That same year she began her portrayal of Charlotte, a successful art dealer and the most idealistic and repressed of the group of four thirtysomething professionals around whom the racy HBO sitcom "Sex & the City" (1998-2004) revolves. Although the most prim and proper, Charlotte often was placed in the oddest romantic entanglements on the show, with her more tame storylines including her dating a man she thinks may be gay, and allowing a foot fetishist shoe salesman to gift her with expensive shoes for the pleasure of touching her feet. Davis' role picked up along with the series in the second season, offering her more screen time and multidimensional situations as the show garnered greater critical acclaim and a Golden Globe Award for Best Comedy Series.

The short seasons of "Sex and the City" allowed Davis to branch out into other work. She starred opposite Rob Lowe with a decidedly unglamorous role as a wife and mother struggling with her husband to slow down an out of control locomotive carrying nuclear waste in the fast-paced NBC action miniseries "Atomic Train". Next she acted opposite Lowe's younger brother Chad, who played the late folksinger in "Take Me Home: The John Denver Story". Davis co-starred in the 2000 CBS biopic as Annie, Denver's first wife and inspiration for his aptly titled hit "Annie's Song". She also appeared in the thriller "Blacktop" (2000) opposite Meat Loaf Aday, the telepic "Someone to Love" (2001) with Kelly Ripa, and headlined the TV movie "Three Days" (2001) as a doomed wife with whom her husband gets to relive their last three days together.

Davis continued to focus on her role in "Sex" as her character Charlotte grew increasingly complex with each season of the show and it remained evident that Davis's adept handling of her character, which is somewhat out of step with the rest of the "Sex" girls, was an equally intergral part of the continued success of the show--Charlotte's arcs were frequently more poignant and realistic than the storylines of her cohorts. After years of seeing her co-stars multiply nominated for Emmys, the deserving Davis got her first nod in the show's final 2004 season (the trophy went to Cynthia Nixon). Shortly after the series concluded, Davis inked a deal to develop her own HBO series.



Cynthia Nixon

A pert and willowy blonde-turned-redhead, Cynthia Nixon has made a successful transition from child performer to adult actress, developing along the way a reputation for creating smart, savvy characters, best examplified by her turn as the frequently lovelorn urban professional Miranda Hobbs on HBO's "Sex and the City."
The native New Yorker broke into showbiz at age 12 as the object of a wealthy schoolmate's crush in "The Seven Wishes of a Rich Kid", a 1979 "ABC Afterschool Special", and made her feature debut shortly after alongside fellow campers Kristy McNichol and Tatum O'Neal in "Little Darlings" (1980), but it was her award-winning Broadway debut as the bratty Dinah Lord in a 1980 revival of "The Philadelphia Story" that established her credentials on the boards, where she has enjoyed her greatest success....


Full Biography

A pert and willowy blonde-turned-redhead, Cynthia Nixon has made a successful transition from child performer to adult actress, developing along the way a reputation for creating smart, savvy characters, best examplified by her turn as the frequently lovelorn urban professional Miranda Hobbs on HBO's "Sex and the City."
The native New Yorker broke into showbiz at age 12 as the object of a wealthy schoolmate's crush in "The Seven Wishes of a Rich Kid", a 1979 "ABC Afterschool Special", and made her feature debut shortly after alongside fellow campers Kristy McNichol and Tatum O'Neal in "Little Darlings" (1980), but it was her award-winning Broadway debut as the bratty Dinah Lord in a 1980 revival of "The Philadelphia Story" that established her credentials on the boards, where she has enjoyed her greatest success. Alternating among the three media, she continued to deliver solid work in projects like the 1982 ABC-movie "My Body, My Child", the features "Prince of the City" (1981) and "I Am the Cheese" (1983) and the 1982 off-Broadway production of John Guare's "Lydie Breeze".

While a freshman at Barnard College in 1984, Nixon made theatrical history, simultaneously appearing in two hit Broadway plays directed by Mike Nichols. The much-hyped feat saw her play the precocious English daughter of Jeremy Irons and Christine Baranski in Tom Stoppard's "The Real Thing" while portraying a teenage runaway who encounters slimy Hollywood types two blocks away in David Rabe's "Hurlyburly". That year's Oscar-winning Best Picture "Amadeus", directed by Milos Forman, also featured her in a brief but memorable role as Mozart's tearful maid, hopelessly confused by the mad goings-on in her master's house. She then landed her first major supporting part in a movie as the intelligent girlfriend who aids her teenage boyfriend (Christopher Collet) in building a nuclear bomb in Marshall Brickman's "The Manhattan Project" (1986). Nixon was part of the all-star cast of the NBC miniseries "The Murder of Mary Phagan" (NBC, 1988) starring Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey and essayed the daughter of a presidential candidate (Michael Murphy) in "Tanner" (also 1988), Robert Altman's sharply-observed, episodic political satire for HBO--she would later reprise the role for the 2004 follow-up "Tanner On Tanner."

On stage, Nixon portrayed Juliet in a 1988 New York Shakespeare Festival production of "Romeo and Juliet" and acted in the workshop production of Wendy Wasserstein's Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Heidi Chronicles", playing several characters after it came to Broadway in 1989. She replaced Marcia Gay Harden as a pill-popping Mormon wife whose husband reveals his homosexuality in Tony Kushner's landmark two-part "Angels in America" (1994), received a Tony nomination for her performance as the headstrong young woman who falls for a mama's boy in "Indiscretions (Les Parents Terribles)" (1996, her sixth Broadway show) and, though she originally lost the part to another actress, eventually took over the role of Lala Levy, the aspiring Scarlett O'Hara in the Tony Award-winning "The Last Night of Ballyhoo" (1997). Nixon was also one of the founding members of the theatrical troupe The Drama Dept., which included Sarah Jessica Parker, Dylan Baker, John Cameron Mitchell and Billy Crudup among its actors, appearing in the group's productions of "Kingdom on Earth" (1996), "June Moon" and "As Bees in Honey Drown" (both 1997) and "The Country Club" (1999).

Nixon has contributed fine work in small roles to such varied pictures as "Addams Family Values" (1993), "Marvin's Room" (1996) and "The Out-of-Towners" (1999) but did not find that breakthrough role to propel her to full-fledged feature stardom.

She did, however, raise her profile significantly as one of the four regulars of HBO's successful comedy "Sex in the City" (1998-2004), inhabiting her role as the no-nonsense lawyer Miranda with full-bodied believability in support of series star Sarah Jessica Parker. After Emmy nominations as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2002 and 2003, Nixon took home the trophy in 2004 for the series' final season.

The immense popularity of the series led Nixon to enjoy her first leading role in a feature, playing a video artist who falls in love, despite her best efforts to avoid commitment, with a bisexual actor who just happens to be dating a gay man (her best friend) in "Advice From a Caterpillar" (2000), as well as starring opposite Scott Bacula in the holiday telepic "Papa's Angels" (2000). In 2002 she also landed a scene-stealing stint as Mrs. Piggee in the much-admired indie comedy "Igby Goes Down," and her turn in the theatrical production of Clare Booth Luce's play "The Women was captured for PBS's "Stage On Screen" series.

Post-"Sex," Nixon remained in demand, enjoying a guest stint on "ER" in 2005 as a mother who undergoes a tricky procedure to lessen the effects of a debilitating stroke. She followed up with a turn as Eleanor Roosevelt for HBO's "Warm Springs" (2005), which chronicled Franklin Delano Roosevelt's quest for a miracle cure after discovering he had polio. Nixon earned an Emmy nomination as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for her sharply drawn performance. She then has a 2005 stint on the ABC hit medical series "House" as a patient who suffers a seizure and matches wits with Dr. House (Hugh Laurie).