Kim Cattrall Turns Cutthroat Coach
March 18, 2005 — -- As the seductress on "Sex and the City," Kim Cattrall would do just about anything but cheat and steal. Now, as a figure skating coach in "Ice Princess," she's playing a character with an entirely different set of loose morals.
You won't see a skater conspiring to have a rival bashed in the knees. But "Ice Princess," opening today, offers a glimpse into the cutthroat competition between teenage girls in the quest for sports glory.
Cattrall, 48, stirs up controversy, just as she did on her steamy HBO comedy, but in an entirely different way. In "Ice," her character drives the girls she trains -- especially her own daughter -- with near brutality.
"I always thought it was such a great metaphor for life to see these skaters crash to the ice then get back up and do a triple jump or a camel spin and go on to win," says Cattrall, who grew up in Canada, where she got to know some competitive skaters and hockey players.
"I know the tremendous dedication and sacrifice that goes into it," she says. "You have to start very young. It's a tough road and even for those who make it, it doesn't last very long."
In the film, Michelle Thachtenberg is geeky Casey Carlyle, who is doing a science project on the physics of ice skating when she discovers she's got talent on ice. Her hit-the-books mom, played by Joan Cusack, is not at all pleased when her girl starts hanging out at the rink.
Cattrall takes Casey on her figure skating team, perhaps in part to coax her own talented-but-uninspired daughter, Gen, to buckle down and practice.
"Her daughter is good enough to be a champion, but she doesn't really want to be a skater -- she wants to be a teenager, discovering boys and doing things that take away from her skating practice," Cattrall says of her character.
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