WATCH: Kim Cattrall Gains 15 Pounds

Kim Cattrall is no Samantha in her new indie film Meet Monica Velour. Best known for playing the sophisticated PR vixen Samantha Jones on Sex and the City, the 53-year-old actress’ role as a washed-up porn star cost her 15 extra pounds—which was a bargain because director Keith Bearden originally asked for 35. “Really, just for health reasons I couldn’t do that,” the actress told New York Magazine. “I also didn’t have enough time to do it safely with a doctor’s care. But what I did was I put on 15 pounds, and that was comfortable. I could do that. I just didn’t exercise at all.”

The Sex and the City star performs a less than glamorous pole-dancing scene in the film and admits to feeling terrified after watching herself on screen. “Most of the time as an actress, you want to look desirable, you want to be pretty, you want to be sexy, you want to be lit properly – whereas here there were days when I didn’t even have any makeup on. There were days when they actually changed the light to make me look harder and more overweight or just more fucked up. I didn’t see the dailies on it because I thought, You know, I’ve made a stand here that I’m gonna do this in a very truthful way, and if I look at them they might scare me.”

Meet Monica Velour premiered Monday at the TriBeCa Film Festival. Sex and the City 2 opens next month. –KRIS ALCANTARA