The 68-year-old actress played Samantha Jones on the hit HBO series and in the season five episode Plus One Is The Loneliest Number, her alter-ego tries an anti-ageing chemical peel that goes awry but Cattrall revealed that the whole thing was inspired by an overly-ambitious tanned look she had tried for an awards show.
She told Harper's Bazaar: "What's funny about that—I don't know if I should tell you this—is they would always rob things from our lives on that show. I had been at an awards ceremony, and I was going for this kind of breezy summer look. So I asked the makeup artist if instead of doing a foundation, we could just do one of those tanning creams, right? So I'm getting my hair and my makeup done.
"They've got the tan stuff on, my hair is taking a little longer, and then they take the tan stuff off of my face. And it's a little darker than we thought it should be.
"We didn't know what to do. We had to go downstairs and go through the press line. And I remember my publicist at the time saying, 'I'm so glad that you didn't win.' I said, 'What?' She said, 'You would have had to go onstage with this ruddy, muddy complexion.'
"People weren't saying anything to me there, but I could tell something was up. So, (the writers) just took it one step further and made it about a chemical peel. Life imitates art."
In the episode, Samantha is left with a sunburned appearance despite being told that the procedure would make her look "10 to 20 years younger" and she decides to attend a glamorous event with a veil over her face.
Meanwhile, Cattrall - who starred alongside Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, and Kristin Davis in the series that centred on a a group of best friends in New York - has these days decided to embrace "self-love" and "authenticity" in her life.
She said: "I think it is all of those things: self-love, and, more important than that, I think it's about being authentic. Whether you're liked or not, you're yourself. When you put makeup on, when you go out and do your day, that you have confidence that you look good. You look good because you take care of yourself, right? That's a great message."
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