Chic geek: Ugly duckling Sarah Jessica Parker may not have quite turned into a swan, but she’s laughing all the way to the bank

12 April 2012
The Weekender

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Dressed for success: Sarah Jessica Parker publicising her new film, the eagerly-awaited Sex And The City

Even by her own neurotic standards, however, the needle on Sarah's 'anxiety barometer' (as some of her friends jokingly call it) is currently straining at the top of the scale.

Tonight, after years of speculation, and latterly months of anticipation, the eagerly awaited film version of the series with which she is most strongly associated, Sex And The City, premieres in London - despite protests from crew and fans alike that its spiritual home is firmly in New York and that it should be seen there first.

Those quibbles aside, this should, by rights, be an exciting time: notwithstanding the fractious squabbles between co-stars that have dogged the show's transition to the big screen, as executive producer and the show's undisputed star, Sarah Jessica Parker could be expected to be enjoying her big moment.

This, though, is to misunderstand her. 'SJP' is, naturally, one of life's fretters, particularly when it comes to matters relating to her career and bank balance. As a result, with expectations at fever pitch, her own anxiety levels are apparently "sky high" this week.

There have been endless telephone calls to girlfriends seeking reassurance, as well as to other senior crew members on the film. "It's good, isn't it?" she has asked anxiously. "We've done it justice?"

Speccy: Sarah cuts a dowdy figure in this early snap

As one friend put it this week: "For Sarah there is a lot riding on this film. It's not just about her self-esteem, but her future security. Her film career since Sex And The City has been mediocre at best and she's a realist.

"She's 43, and she's not likely to be in the running for any great roles in the near future. She realises that the best bid for success and for financial security for her is Sex And The City."

Financial security, of course, is all relative: with rumoured earnings of £12.5million in the three-and-a-half years since the series ended, the film's relative success or otherwise is hardly a matter of keeping the wolves from the handsome front door of that Manhattan home.

But that is to miss the point with Sarah, a woman who has never quite forgotten the privations of her childhood and who, according to those who know her best, "lives in fear" of everything she has achieved being snatched away from her.

As one friend put it: "Her rational brain knows that she could stop working tomorrow and live not even just a nice life, but a luxurious life on the money she has in the bank. But she could never do that. She will never stop working as long as blood is pumping round her body."

To trace the roots of this neurosis, we must travel back to 1965, when Sarah was born in Nelsonville, a mining town in Ohio, the youngest of four children to her writer father Stephen and nursery school teacher mother Barbara.

The marriage ended in divorce when Sarah was a toddler, with her mother remarrying shortly afterwards.

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She's so vein: A svelte-looking Sarah Jessica Parker, with veiny hands, leaving the Wolseley restaurant in London last night

Barbara had four further children with her second husband, Paul Forste, who earned little from his job as a lorry driver, and, as a result, while the family environment was loving, money was tight (Sarah has, in the past, referred to her childhood as almost 'Dickensian' in its poverty).

"Sarah still talks a lot about the fact that her childhood was poor in material things although rich in culture," one friend says.

"Her mother did everything she could to pass on a love of the arts to the kids, even though there was very little in the coffers.

"She would take them to matinees where children's places were free, or take them to free public performances in the park. Sarah talks about passing on the same instinct to her son James today."

In the early Seventies, the family arrived in New York in an overcrowded VW van, setting up home in welfare housing in the city's newly constructed Roosevelt Island district.

Sweet little geek: The gap-toothed child star, aged eight

Already training in ballet and singing, being in New York allowed Sarah to further develop her performance skills, and by eight years old she had won a role in a televised production of The Little Match Girl.

Two years later she was working on Broadway in a play directed by Harold Pinter. "What you have to remember," the friend goes on, "is that even when she was very young, Sarah was practically the breadwinner: the money she earned was really important to the family.

"That's a big part of who she is - it doesn't matter how much she earns, part of her is always going to be the girl from the family that shopped in the thrift store.

"That's why she has such a huge work ethic. It's a fear driven by insecurity."

And while she built a solid, if sometimes plodding film career (including a breakthrough role in the 'bratpack' hit Footloose in 1984), the fact that it was only at 33 - almost geriatric in Hollywood film terms - that she found stellar fame as sex columnist Carrie Bradshaw in Sex And The City has led her to become fiercely protective of the financial advantages that have come with it.

Certainly, there is a steeliness which belies her almost Pollyanna-ish demeanour.

Those who meet her are struck immediately by how unlike the cool Carrie Bradshaw she is.

"She's got this old-fashioned quality about her," one friend says. "She uses words like "jeez" and "shucks" and "golly gee"." Professionally, however, it's a different matter: Sarah is an "operator", according to those who have worked with her.

Having negotiated executive producer status on Sex And The City, she was single-minded in exercising her control over the series (she was certainly "impressive", according to one series insider, in negotiating lucrative product placement deals once it became clear the show was a huge hit).

One journalist who interviewed Parker in recent months recalls how she was involved in the article "almost to the point of writing it herself".

"After I'd done the interview with SJP, she would actually phone up in person to check quotes and context, which is very unusual.

"She wasn't rude, she was always polite and friendly, but she was just one of the most neurotic people I've dealt with, and that is saying something in this business."

Despite these characteristics, the actress was admired and respected on the Sex And The City set by the crew, who admired her professionalism and her friendly lack of pretension.

"She was often on set two hours before the rest of the cast, and she was the only one among them who made a point of remembering everyone's birthdays, even the crew's, bringing cookies and flowers and cakes. That sort of thing stays in people's minds," one on-set insider reveals.

That camaraderie famously did not always extend to all her co-stars: the film's inception was delayed for two years by the refusal of actress Kim Cattrall, who plays man-eating Samantha, to sign up to take part.

She was reportedly dismayed by what she saw as a hugely unequal gap between Parker's wage packet and the rest of the cast, eventually giving in when offered a reported £3million - £2million more than fellow co-stars Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon.

The situation is said to have infuriated Parker, who believed that Cattrall was sabotaging the film, although recently she seemed to publicly backtrack and suggest she understood her fellow actress's position.

Asked about the tension with Cattrall in an interview with the respected New York magazine, she replied: "If I had thought it was any of my business at the time, what I would have said is: 'Isn't it OK for Kim to think the money wasn't right?'"

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Not so glamorous: Sarah and a pal in earlier days

If this looks like an olive branch, then not everyone sees it that way: after all, as one Sex And The City insider points out: "The point is it was precisely her business - she was executive producer of the show.

"So to suggest that it was out of her hands is ludicrous at best and guileful at worst. She had the power to make changes."

Others have pointed out that Parker has not extended her famous on-set generosity to the pre-film release publicity blitz either. "A lot of the magazine covers promoting the movie are Sarah on her own - which is kind of ironic given it's meant to be a team ensemble," says one crew member.

She has showed the same singlemindedness when it comes to the film's official merchandising, negotiating for it to fall under the umbrella of her new clothing line Bitten (a move that has left all her co-stars, according to rumour, "somewhat taken aback").

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Au naturel: The Sex and the City star is almost unrecognisable

Alongside the money from the DVD sales that she will pocket as executive producer, the merchandising stands to net her millions of dollars.

Little wonder even her friends refer to her as 'SJP Inc'. Certainly, in the wake of Sex And The City, Sarah Jessica has been very industrious.

Film roles aside, there has been an advertising deal with Gap, her own perfume launch, Lovely (and another in the pipeline), and latterly Bitten, her budget clothing range which sells trousers for £5 (Tagline: 'fashion is not a luxury, it's a right').

If some in the fashion industry were surprised by the budget tag, then her friends weren't.

"It was typical of SJP," one friend says. "Even now, with all that money in the bank, she is still incredibly money conscious.

"She is famous for asking if she can take shoes and clothes at the end of a shoot. If it's going begging, she'll have it, and if it's not, she'll ask - she sees no shame in it."

When the final frame had been shot on the last televised episode of Sex And The City, Sarah is said to have "cleared out" the props and wardrobe department (by prior agreement, it must be said).

"The joke is that somewhere in Manhattan is the world's coolest storage unit, as she certainly couldn't fit it all into her house," one former crew member says.

This pragmatic approach to material possessions is something that Sarah has apparently passed on - or attempted to, at least - to her husband of 11 years, fellow actor Matthew Broderick, as the following incident suggests.

"A colleague of mine was on a shoot with Matthew when his telephone rang," one photographic assistant recalls.

"He could overhear Matthew saying: 'I don't want to ask, I really don't want to ask, seriously, I'm embarrassed' and this female voice, which everyone assumed to be his wife, on the end of the line. "When he got off the phone he sort of shuffled awkwardly and asked whether it would be OK to take one of the outfits from the shoot home with him."

The couple met when Matthew was directing Sarah's brother Toby, also an actor, in an off-Broadway play. They began dating the following year, married in May 1997 in a former synagogue in New York, and now live in Manhattan's West Village.

Part of her husband's attraction to Sarah, according to friends, is his solid family lineage.

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Designer dressing: What a difference a stylist makes

"By contrast to Sarah, he comes from an old-school patrician New York family, and that was very attractive to her," a friend explains.

"It wasn't a case of active social-climbing - she just fell in love - but the fact that he represents this solid security would have been part of his attraction."

The couple have a son, James Wilkie, five, and Sarah has apparently accepted that, at 43, there will be no more children.

"I think her feeling is that she's done with that," another source reveals. "She would have loved a big family, but at 38 she started late, it hasn't happened and she's adopted the position of being happy with what she has."

Arguably, of course, she already has another baby. Sex And The City, after all, is a demanding beast, one which over the years has taken up an awful lot of her time.

Already, even before the film has premiered, there is talk of a sequel - talk which, as you might imagine, is not discouraged by Parker.

Yet even this, you sense, will not be enough to keep the needle on that anxiety barometer from trembling violently tonight, as the movie version of the hit TV show is unveiled to the world.

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