Rise to Fame
Years of B-movies and ensemble parts came before Sex and the City. Police Academy, Mannequin, a rogue Vulcan in Star Trek VI. Then Samantha Jones happened. In 1998, she played a PR executive who was loud about sex, disinterested in marriage, and completely unbothered by turning 40. While the show positioned Carrie as the lead, Samantha was the one people quoted. She won the 2002 Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress, which was really the industry catching up to what audiences already knew.
In the Spotlight
The public feud with Sarah Jessica Parker became as famous as the show itself. After contract talks for a third SATC movie broke down, she posted on Instagram in 2018 calling Parker a hypocrite, making it impossible to pretend there was nothing to see here. Then the head of HBO personally called her to negotiate the And Just Like That cameo, and she agreed: 73 seconds of screen time, filmed entirely separate from the rest of the cast. She's confirmed she won't return for Season 3. Based in London now, married and done with the franchise.
Side Notes
She nearly boarded Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988, the Lockerbie bombing flight that killed 270 people. She missed her connection and caught a later flight instead. The story of how she met her current husband Russell Thomas is almost as absurd: he was the BBC audio engineer assigned to record a radio essay she wrote about insomnia. They connected on social media afterward, he flew to Vancouver to see her, and they quarantined together during COVID. She became a US citizen in 2020 specifically to vote in that year's election.