Sarah Jessica Parker has opened up about how difficult it was to deal with cruel remarks about her appearance, especially in the early days of playing Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City.
On a recent episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, the 60-year-old actress got real about how harsh public judgment took an emotional toll on her.
“Just discussions of my physical person,” she said when asked what she found hardest to cope with. “Stuff that I couldn’t change, and wouldn’t change, and had never considered changing.” Despite the criticism, Parker made it clear she’s never been interested in altering her appearance to meet public expectations. “Even still… no interest in changing it.”
Back when she first took on the role that would define her career, the internet didn’t offer a platform for celebrities to clap back or defend themselves. That made it even more isolating. “I didn’t feel like I could sit in a room, and someone would say to me, ‘You’re really unattractive,’” she shared. “And then I could say, ‘Wow, um, well first of all, that’s hard to hear. But second of all, why do you seem angry about it?’”
Parker recounted a particularly painful experience when a major magazine made what she described as a “really mean” comment about her looks. The impact wasn’t just fleeting. “I was sobbing because it felt so purposeful,” she admitted. “It was like a kick in the rubber parts.”
The actress, who currently stars in the spin-off series And Just Like That, said that the criticism back then felt shocking and personal. She leaned on friends for support during that period, often calling them in tears. What bothered her most was the deliberate cruelty behind the words. “Why is this deserving of your time?” she asked. “Why do you seem to delight in saying it?”
Beyond personal attacks, Parker also pointed to the larger issue of how female characters are judged compared to men. In an earlier interview with HuffPost UK, she talked about how female leads often face harsher criticism for moral flaws. “A male lead on a show can be a murderer, and people love him,” she said. “If a woman has an affair or behaves poorly… there’s a punitive response to it.”
Despite all of this, Parker sees value in sparking conversation, even if it’s not always positive. “That kind of connection and those kinds of strong feelings, both positive and negative, are pretty wonderful,” she added. “It’s just interesting, the ways in which we judge women, and not men.”
Her message is clear: she’s not here to change for anyone, and she’s not afraid to call out double standards in how women, both on and off screen, are treated.
