After winning awards and legions of fans for her role as Carrie Bradshaw in Sex And The City, Sarah Jessica Parker says she's finding life a bit scary but, with her latest film out next week, enjoyable too.
EVEN with 20 years in the business behind her, Sarah Jessica Parker feels like the new girl at school. The reason is Carrie Bradshaw, the role she played in the hit TV comedy Sex And The City and which won her four Golden Globes and a Screen Actors Guild Award as well as legions of fans who loved the character's dress sense and outlook on life.
Life since the series ended has been "really scary", she admits. "That's been the hardest part about leaving the show, this really gypsy-like life that I'm back into. It's like being a new kid in school all the time.
"I don't really like change. I'd like everything to be the same constantly, except that I love being terrified. I like the idea very much of playing people I haven't played before, in unfamiliar environments, with new people."
She feels no stigma attached to being so closely associated with Carrie Bradshaw, pointing out that she's just made three films back-to-back: The Family Stone, Spinning To Butter and Failure To Launch, in roles that are completely different.
"I feel very lucky right now," Parker continues. "If anything, it's incumbent upon me to make smart choices. I have plenty of lucrative opportunities to play the redux or the mediocre version of this story that we told for so long, but I don't have any interest in that.
"I'm very comfortable with the association of Sex And The City. In fact, I feel very privileged to have that extraordinary experience. I also recognise the strong identification.
"Because I don't feel it's defining me, because I've had so many interesting opportunities since the show ended, I feel like I can be nostalgic about the experience, very comfortable with the association - and also get to be an actor and do different things."
She has her own production company, Pretty Matches Productions, and a two-year exclusive television deal with HBO, which made Sex And The City. The company is developing and producing series but not for Parker herself. "It's nothing for me to be in. So far we have two things that are about women, in cities, and the other things are for the most part about men," she says.
"We're looking because we want to have more women back on HBO. I want HBO to carve out Monday nights at nine for women."
In her latest movie release, Failure To Launch, she plays a woman who reckons she can persuade thirtysomething Tripp, played by Matthew McConaughey, to finally move out of his parents' home by pretending to fall for him.
The film reunites her with McConaughey, who had a guest role in Sex And The City and was, she says, "pretty generous in spirit because he played a really vulgar version of a movie star called Matthew McConaughey. So I already held him in pretty high regard. As different as we are and as different as we work - he loves improvising, I'm pretty much a script person - we worked very easily together."
The title of the movie refers to a growing phenomenon, in the US at least, where men are living at home past what's considered an appropriate age. Unlike her character Paula, Parker believes that anyone who thinks they can change another person, let alone a man, is misguided.
"I have so many single women friends who date men with big warning signs all over them, and they feel they are uniquely gifted or skilled that they'll be the person that finally fixes all these flaws that I guess are so objectionable," she says. "I feel men are far more complicated and interesting than that."
She's no longer in the dating game, as the wife of actor Matthew Broderick. They're happily married although she doesn't make too much of the fact. "We don't pretend to hold our marriage up as a standard," she says.
"In fact, we decided to not ever suggest that it is a model by which everybody else should judge theirs. Maybe that's why it's lasted because we don't really open it up for conversation."
As for their son, she jokes that, at three years of age, he's a little young to be thinking about moving out of home. "I hope I'm providing my son with a beautiful home that he feels safe and comfortable in," she says.
"It's going to be a pretty tough pill to go out into the world and live in a studio apartment, but that's one of the beautiful challenges of being an adult and being independent.
"So yes, I can see why it's very appealing to live at home, but only because I've been asked this question a lot. I'd say that it's also equally thrilling to be an adult and stand on your own, and grapple with difficult and complex situations."
* Failure To Launch (12A) opens in cinemas on Friday.
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