Richard Crouse

Kim Cattrall wants you to see her new movie Meet Monica Velour.

She’s been doing a great deal of press, but hasn’t restricted herself to only talking to reporters. Her campaign to find an audience for the film includes talking to everyone who’ll listen.

“I feel like a kid passing out my CVs,” she says, relating a story about a woman who approached her at lunch asking about the name of the movie. Cattrall not only gave her the title, but told her where it was playing and how to get there.

“It’s very blissful for me to tell people about something I think is good and that they might enjoy and possibly need in the sense of it being a reflection of something in their lives.”

In Meet Monica Velour Cattrall, best known as Sex and the City’s iconic Samantha Jones, plays the title character, a former porn star, now a struggling, single mom. Her life changes when she befriends her biggest fan, an awkward 18-year-old boy who learns to accept her for what she is, not for what she was.

“I really believe this film should be seen,” she says. “I feel like such a big mouth famous, but Michael Stipe is a friend of mine, and he brought a bunch of people to see the film. A couple of them were younger and they said, ‘We’ve never seen a film like that. We really enjoyed it. It unfolded in a different way.’

“I thought, yes, it’s not about slamming you, or 3-Ding you, or out electronitizing you,” she laughs, “or whatever the words are! Welcome to stories that are about people. That are subtle and nuanced and detailed and three dimensional. Life is not always about huge meteorites heading toward your planet, it’s sometimes just about a page turn.”

The film represents a bit of a page turn for Cattrall. The glamorous star left the Louboutins behind and gained 20 pounds to play the down-on-her-luck Velour. It’s a role Cattrall has been yearning for.

“I’ve waited my whole life in some ways as an actress to say, ‘Look at me,’” she says, “not the images you cast upon me, but me. That’s fantasy. This is reality.”

It’s a reality she desperately wants to share.

“I think it’s an E-ticket because it takes me on a journey. I want to find more movies like this.”