Kim Cattrall was born in Liverpool in 1956. She made her name in the Eighties in films such as Mannequin, but is best known for her role as Samantha Jones in Sex and the City. She has been married three times. Her latest role is as Rudyard Kipling’s wife Caroline in the ITV1 drama My Boy Jack, which will be shown on Sunday at 9pm.

I tend to look somewhere other than the media for my definition of what is beautiful. Is that a heavily retouched 18-year-old or a 40-year-old on that front cover? I don’t think so; nobody looks like that. I look at people such as Helen Mirren or Judi Dench, these amazing women who look great, but they look like their age, and I think why would anyone want to lower themselves to look like an alien? Sex appeal is all about confidence, and that comes from self-knowledge.

I’ve seen some women who are not particularly attractive but they have an assurance, and there’s something so attractive about someone who doesn’t have to work so hard. Still, I really like it when my boyfriend makes suggestions about what I wear. I like him going into the closet and taking out the cowboy boots, and finding the white jeans, and sometimes I’ll be wearing my hair up and he’ll say, “you know what, put the ponytail a little higher”.

I’m 51 and I think I look my age, but I don’t want to be 20 any more or even 30 or 40. Besides, I’m too terrified to get any proper work so I’ve had just little things done. I have a big crease between my eyebrows and I use Botox to get rid of that, but that’s kind of it. I’m scared of surgery because I don’t want to look in the mirror and not recognise who’s looking back. I don’t want to be in a room, and to have people turn when I leave and say, “what happened?”

What I wear is a reflection of where I am going and how I am feeling. If I’m in a good mood, it’s got to be cashmere and jeans – just something comfy, soft and warm. When I’m down I might find something that I haven’t worn for a while that was bought for me – or wear a brooch or a pair of shoes that are like old friends. If you look closely, you know a lot about someone by what they wear. Costumes are like fitting into a skin, whatever the period is, and I have never played anyone that had actually existed before, so my role in My Boy Jack was really exciting.

The clothes in Sex and the City were a blast! My favourite part was working with Patricia Field, the costume designer. It was just insane. My wardrobe was more outrageous than raunchy. Yes, the colours were bright and the necklines were super-low, but my behaviour was more daring than my wardrobe. I think some of the other characters’ choices were more, “Soho trash queens”, but Samantha was a professional woman who worked and lived uptown, so she was always well put together. For the first season, I had a connection at Yves Saint Laurent, and I wore YSL suits with a brooch or a hat, or a bag that was kind of fun or zing, but never too raunchy.

The scene where Samantha takes her wig offwhen she is suffering from breast cancer, and throws it across the room wasn’t in the script, it was something spontaneous I did. Samantha’s wigs became just another accessory. We didn’t want the storyline to feel like “Oh my God, we’re going to get her head shaved”. Despite what was happening to her, we felt that her character could withstand it and so you went through it with her. She carried off the afro wigs, the pink wigs, it was really fun. Obviously, there was a serious side to that storyline, as well, and I got some very intimate responses.

People search me out, whether it’s on a beach in Australia or walking down the street in New York, running after me and crying, “I had cancer diagnosed when your character was going through it, and you saved my emotional state at the time because I felt frozen”. It’s both amazing and devastating, because as an actress I imagined what it would be like – but these women’s hair actually did fall out, they didn’t have skullcaps and make-up.

Times recommends

• Jennifer Aniston, time to be a real bitch
• It may be hard to say so, but conversation is back
• News Review interview: Georgina Baillie