Kim Cattrall "watched a lot of 70s porn" to get prepared to play an ageing stripper in 'Meet Monica Velour'.

The 54-year-old beauty plays a sex film star turned table dancer in the comedy drama alongside Dustin Ingram and she admits she watched a lot of footage about people in the industry to get ready for the part.

She said: "What I did do is watch a lot of 70s porn and I watched a lot of documentaries about pornography. What was so frightening about it is that these young girls, I think they come from all over the world to come to Hollywood and they want to be stars, and then suddenly they realize that they don't know how to act.

"They're pretty but there's a lot prettier women, so then they're sort of relegated to answering ads in the back of newspapers where they're looking for live models and then nude live models and then pornography is just right there. They become stars for a period of time and then they marry."

Despite the intensity of the research, Kim - who has previously written books about sex - knew she wanted to do the movie because the role "scared" her.

She told Cinemablend.com: "When I was a young actress, Jack Lemon said to me, 'Do stuff that scares you.' That's how he chose his projects and I thought, 'That's a great way to look at it,' because then you're constantly changing; you're getting stronger.

"There's something about Monica that scared me because she is so hopeless. She's strong, but she has no tools to change her situation."