Sarah Jessica Parker thinks people don't realise she is "radically different" from Carrie Bradshaw.
Sarah Jessica Parker
The 50-year-old actress can understand why people see similarities between herself and her famous 'Sex and the City' alter ego, but she insists it took "real work" to portray the character.
She said: "I love the process of becoming somebody else, but the work to become so, and to be convincing, is still very challenging.
"Every project is brand new and scary. People probably don't realise that Carrie Bradshaw was radically different from who I was, who I continue to be.
"I think that sometimes because we look alike and live in the same city and haunt the same neighbourhoods, that it was sort of like I was playing in the sandbox, when in truth it took real work every day to be her, to understand her, to not judge her."
Sarah Jessica - who has son James, 12, and twin daughters Marion and Tabitha, six, with husband Matthew Broderick - will next be seen in HBO show 'Divorce' and she is enjoying playing a character so "incredibly different" to her real self.
She told WSJ. magazine: "I'm working on a new series for HBO now.
"The character I'm playing is incredibly different from me in many ways - she handles complexity differently than I do, her marriage is different from my own, and she's struggling financially in a way that I don't at this point in my life.
"But that's what I love. I still love the idea of being somebody else."