After playing the iconic 'Sex and the City' character Samantha Jones, it's hard to imagine a paunchy Kim Cattrall dancing on stage in some seedy strip bar, with drunks heckling, "Is she wearing Depends?"

These are the indignities that Cattrall, 54, suffers in the indie dramedy "Meet Monica Velour," where she plays a faded 1980s porn star.

"I've waited my whole life to play a woman like this," Cattrall told CTV.ca.

"The minute I read the script I couldn't get Monica out of my head. She scared me, but she also beckoned me," said Cattrall, who gained 20 pounds and ditched every trace of Samantha Jones' cougar confidence for this part.

What she delivers, instead, is a spiteful, distrusting, world-weary human being.

This quirky effort from first-time director Keith Bearden is, first and foremost, a story about beaten-down dreams and lives.

Living in a broken-down trailer in Indiana, the once-glorious Monica is now a bitter substance abuser.

Locked in a custody battle for her daughter, Monica scrapes together a living stripping in local dives. There she pole dances in her runny makeup, peek-a-boo lingerie and cheap plastic stilettos.

"You screw a few hundred guys and the whole world turns against you," Monica tells herself.

That attitude is softened by one fateful encounter.

Long idolized by a 17-year-old dork named Tobe (Dustin Ingram), this fan drives all the way from Washington State in his grandfather's hotdog truck to see Monica perform in a dive called the Petting Zoo.

Monica's act is a sad affair. But Tobe, a frizzy-haired beanpole watches her in drooling rapture.

When some college boys hoot profanities at Monica, Tobe defends her honour and gets punched in the face for his trouble.

So begins their unlikely friendship, one that feels like "Little Miss Sunshine" meets "Harold and Maude."

Cattrall reminds Hollywood she can act

"Dustin is a great kid. Now he's like an adopted son to me. But I didn't know him from Adam when we started shooting," said Cattrall.

Director Bearden used that to his advantage.

"Keith kept telling me, 'Don't be nice to Dustin. Don't let him in.' It sounds mean, but it was a smart thing to do," said Cattrall.

"These two people are so stuck in the lives. They had to reveal themselves to one another in a believable way. Otherwise the film would have been horrible," she said.

Cattrall's performance, especially, has earned warm reviews.

"This movie's a meal. It's no a fast-food flick," said Cattrall, who first found stardom in the 1980s in films such as "Porky's," "Police Academy," "Big Trouble in Little China" and "Mannequin."

"Today it's all 3-D bells and whistles. It's like 'Super Size Me' -- it makes you sick after while. I need more humanity from my entertainment," said Cattrall.

Thanks to HBO's TV series, "Sex and the City," Cattrall found international stardom. That notoriety grew thanks to two "Sex and the City" movies and roles in films such as Roman Polanski's 2010 hit, "The Ghost Writer."

Cattrall also earned rave reviews in 2010 in a revival of Noel Coward's play, "Private Lives," in London's West End.

Now, Cattrall wants to "tell stories for women my age and do it with understanding, questioning and honesty."

She added, "In the past, my film roles were so dictated by what I looked like. I've been sexualized and sometimes gladly so because it was work. It meant making enough money so I could do theatre, my real passion."

But "Meet Monica Velour" "was transformative and liberating" for the glamorous star.

"It took me way out of my comfort zone to look and feel like Monica," said Cattrall.

"She isn't always likeable. But she's the closest I've come to playing a real woman. That was incredibly gratifying."