7 things you never knew about Sarah Jessica Parker

Jun 13 2010 by Roz Laws, Sunday Mercury

1Born on March 25 1965 in Nelsonville, Ohio, Sarah Jessica was one of eight children of a nursery school teacher and a journalist.

2She grew up in Cincinnati and New York. For much of her childhood, her family was on welfare receiving benefits and she had the stigma of being singled out for free school lunches. She says: “I remember my childhood as Dickensian. We were poor. We didn’t have electricity, Christmases or birthdays sometimes.”

3She trained in singing and ballet from an early age and began acting professionally at eight. She and four of her siblings appeared in The Sound of Music in St Louis, and she took the lead in the Broadway musical Annie aged 14. She was just nine when she appeared in her first film, The Little Match Girl. Other movies included Footloose, LA Story, Honeymoon in Vegas, Miami Rhapsody and The First Wives Club.

4She dated Robert Downey Jr for seven years but married actor Matthew Broderick in 1997. They have a seven-year-old son, James Wilke, and a year ago welcomed twin daughters Marion and Tabitha, born via a surrogate, into the family.

5They live in an 1840s brownstone in Greenwich Village, around the corner from Carrie’s apartment in Sex and the City. They spend summers in a farmhouse in the Hamptons .

6She has won numerous awards for Sex and the City, including four Golden Globes and two Emmys. She was also nominated for a Worst Actress Razzie for her less-than-thrilling appearance in Did You Hear About The Morgans?, and in 2007 was voted Unsexiest Woman Alive by Maxim Magazine.

7The clothes in her fashion line Bitten sell for under $20 at discount store Steve & Barry’s. She’s released five different perfumes under such names as Lovely, Dawn and Endless. She claims that walking in five inch heels (Manolo Blahniks, naturally) feel “like flip-flops” to her.