When she was a young girl at the Clifton Elementary School in Cincinnati, Sarah Jessica Parker used to dread lunchtimes. That was when her name would be called and she, along with the other children who were poor enough to qualify for welfare, would walk to the front of the lunch line to receive her ticket for a free meal from the state.
The humiliation was such that, decades on, she remembers it as if it were yesterday.
"I knew I was different from the kids who pay for lunch or bring their lunch from home," she said. "It was a stigma thing. I was not the only person receiving a free lunch, but you are aware."
What a stunning irony, then, that Parker, through the character of Carrie Bradshaw, has become the undisputed icon of our spend-spend-spend society.
Carrie is, of course, the most famous shopaholic in history, the woman who made shoe designer Manolo Blahnik a household name and who cooed almost as much over the creation of a walk-in wardrobe to house her hundreds of handbags, shoes and dresses, as she did over a proposal of marriage from Mr Big.
Vast wealth
And it is true to say that the Sex And The City franchise has enriched Parker personally beyond even her alter ego Carrie's wildest dreams.
The first movie spin-off of the TV series made nearly half-a-billion dollars, and the signs are that the new one will do just as well, even though many critics think it is tired old rubbish. ("It is to movies what fried dough is to nutrition," sniffed the New York Observer.)
Maybe so, but thanks to SATC and a host of other canny endorsement deals, Parker's personal wealth is now vast.
In addition to her £10.3 million fee (Dh54.92 million) — far more than the rest of the cast — for appearing in the movies, Parker also receives a percentage of the "back end" — the profits from DVD sales, box office and TV rights, which is where the money really is.
And so the girl whose mother would buy smocked Polly Flinders dresses at bargain stores for 99 cents is now sitting on a fortune which reputedly stands at £90 million.
She and husband actor Matthew Broderick (best known for his role in cult teen movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off) are so wealthy that they have three holiday homes in the Hamptons, worth a total of £8.5 million.
Day to day, they live in an imposing brownstone in New York's Greenwich Village. They are said to have recently bought an even larger mansion in the city, possibly to better accommodate the twins Tabitha and Marion who were delivered by a surrogate in June last year. Their son James Wilkie is seven years old.
Parker is, though, still decidedly uncomfortable and contradictory when it comes to money.
"I can be profligate and super-frugal," she has admitted. "I have such a weird relationship with money."
Extraordinarily, it seems that what this 45-year-old woman fears the most is losing it all.
"My friends know me so well, and they know how terrified I am of being broke, and they think it is hilarious and humorous," she said.
Brandon Hurst, who wrote a biography of the star, observes: "She was very poor as a child. Even now I would say that she is not a conspicuous consumer by any means."
Indeed, aside from investing in bricks and mortar, Parker leads a surprisingly modest life. Her last holiday was a skiing trip at a low-key, family-friendly resort in Utah. She doesn't go to opening nights and fancy restaurants, nor does she spend her money on private jets or expensive breaks. Hurst calls her "grounded and down-to-earth" in her lifestyle choices.
But the question on everyone's lips is, why? And might financial anxieties mean that the actress — who is known for her cheerful and professional manner — acts on the cheap side when it comes to freebies.
Rumour has it that her grasping behaviour over free clothes and props on the set of SATC2 raised more eyebrows than a Botox doctor at lunchtime.
She is rumoured to have scooped up 12 pairs of Swarovski crystalline cocktail glasses which were used in a wedding scene, worth a total of £3,227. Her publicist Ina Treciokas denies the story and says that Parker didn't ask for anything from the set.
But she did take home the £6,000 jewelled Pucci gown which she wore on the show, and which was given to her by the label. Other sources have remarked that Parker, as a matter of course, takes home any costumes which take her fancy: "The rule is that if it has been on her back, then it comes home with her... and that goes for everything from lingerie upwards."
It seems to be a longstanding habit. In the past, Parker has conceded that she keeps all of the clothes she wears in SATC— as long as they are not being auctioned off for charity or returned to a designer's showroom — and has done since the days of the television series.
‘All mean something'
"Everything is archived really carefully," she said. "I have it in a storage place and I'm very sentimental about it. I will be one of those crazy old ladies with a lot of meaningless clothes. But, seriously, they all mean something to me."
This attachment to the material spoils of her job are, she admits, partly in reaction to the role.
"There will never be another part I play that will allow that kind of indulgence," she said. "I really love all the dresses. I am one of eight children so I am bad at choosing favourites, because my mum would never pick a favourite between us. I could never select a favourite dress, because there is value in a simple, cheap piece of clothing as well as something designer-made."
She likes to have freebies, then, and lots of them. Indeed she is reputed to have taken such a huge haul of clothes from her days as a celebrity model for Gap, back in 2004, that it was wrongly reported the company had given her free clothes for life — on top of her £26 million deal.
It is clear that Parker is more determined than most actresses to make money from her name. In January this year she signed a deal to be the chief creative officer of the Halston Heritage designer clothing brand. With wonderful synergy, she wears her "own label" five times in the new movie and in the promotional poster. This means that fans can see the dresses on screen and then further enrich Parker by going out and buying them too.
The new film is sponsored to an absurd degree. Lipton sparkling diet green tea is the official drink, Skyy is the official vodka (what movie really needs an official vodka?) and Hewlett-Packard computers also have a deal.
Mercedes Benz is advertising its new E-Class Cabriolet, which is "stylish enough for Carrie, luxurious enough for Charlotte, smart enough for Miranda and fast enough for Samantha".
Parker also has her own product line to promote in the form of a new "genderless" perfume called SJP NYC. This is the sixth scent she has launched in five years. The first was called Lovely, then came Covet, Dawn, Endless and Twilight.
Her friend, the interviewer Kevin Sessums, chided: "How many does that make? Honey, don't you have enough money by now?"
He recalls: "She refuses to be kidded and shot me a look. ‘Come on, Kevin,' she said. ‘You know me. I have never made a decision based on money in my life.'"
That assertion would have Kim Cattrall (who plays man-eating Samantha) choking. She and the rest of the actresses on the show are all too familiar with Parker's taste for financially advantageous deals.
In the early days of the television show, Cattrall is said to have suggested that Parker, on roughly double the wage of the rest of them, should invite the producers to pay them all the same money.
But, for whatever reason, the disparity in pay remained, and does to this day.
Partly, it's a reflection of Parker's status when the call for SATC came in 1998. She was 33, newly married to Broderick and had perhaps by then resigned herself to the idea that her not wildly successful acting career was never going to earn her serious money. She was delighted, then, when the TV show was a hit, and thrilled to earn an initial £68,000 per episode. And that figure — regarded by her as a "windfall" — only went up and up.
In 2000, just as she was becoming one of the hottest stars on television, she admitted that she was aiming for a fortune of £5.5 million (the amount that her father once told her would mean financial security for life). "I would like for them [my children] to not be aware of money, which means I have been very aware of my financial situation," she said.
In the early years, she could not escape the feeling that her chances to make money might run out — and rated herself as so plain in looks that she feared she might never work in television again.
"In the case of the entertainment industry, actresses have this window, and the window closes every day a little bit more," she said. "The earnings potential falls and the window is closed, and I am really cognisant of that. I have no illusions of who I am or what I look like or what I have to offer."
Now, she must realise that she has enough money to never need work again.
Parker told Forbes magazine that she doesn't ask any more to know "returns or numbers" when it comes to her wealth (although back in 2000, her accountant Frank Selvaggi said she rang every month to go over her bills and financial statements, and discuss swings on the stock market). She can afford to take a more casual attitude.
Impoverished youth
But it seems that the memories of her impoverished youth, during which her father Stephen walked out on her mother Barbara when she was small, still trouble her.
"I remember my childhood as Dickensian," she said. "We didn't have electricity sometimes. We didn't have Christmases sometimes, or we didn't have birthdays, or the bill collectors came, or the phone company would call and say: ‘We're shutting your phones off.'"
Parker told an interviewer that her mother's role model was Rose Kennedy (matriarch of the political dynasty), and that even though they were living in chaos, they always dressed immaculately: the girls in smocked dresses and patent shoes, the boys in blazers. They would go to see the ballet and the theatre at free matinees. No one would swear, and her mother would not let her work in television, thinking it "vulgar and trashy".
It's an image which Parker adheres to even to this day. She adores the old-fashioned sound of her twin daughters' names — Tabitha (whom she calls Babe) and Marion, who is often known by her middle name, Loretta, or her nickname, Kitty.
"Aren't those great names?" she asked an interviewer this spring. "Babe Broderick, Kitty Broderick. Its like it's 1940. I wish it were 1940."
So the girl who grew up on welfare and is now worth £90 million, has turned out to be a fan of depression-era chic.
It's a rich irony, in more ways than one.
