Gay fave Sarah Jessica Parker embarks on her post-Sex and the City career with a series of radically different films, including the breezy new romantic comedy, Failure to Launch, co-starring this year's Sexiest Man Alive, Matthew McConaughey.

By Christopher Wallenberg

The gay community may have enthusiastically embraced Sarah Jessica Parker as one of its own, but she knows the real reason why all you gay men want to see her new romantic comedy, Failure to Launch -- for a chance to glimpse the hot bod of co-star Matthew McConaughey. He is, after all, People magazine's newest "Sexiest Man Alive." Parker, though, completely understands. In fact, she made sure you'll get plenty of good looks at McConaughey's toned and tanned physique.

"He's quite attractive and has a lovely body, so I said give them what they want. Anytime he took his shirt off or if I had to put my hand inside his shirt and rub his pectoral muscle, I told him I was doing it for America," says the beloved former Sex and the City star, with deadpan comic timing, as we talk over the phone. "Then sometimes I was like, 'Just take your shirt off. I mean, just give them what they want!'"

Throughout our interview, Parker displays that sharp wit and shows why she's a favorite on the talk show couches of Letterman and Leno. Yet she also evinces a polite, well-mannered demeanor that should come as little surprise to those who know her well. That's the thing about Sarah Jessica: She's a nice girl. But she's also cute, smart, fun, talented, and witty -- all traits that endeared her to fans of Sex and the City during its incredible six-season run.

The zeitgeist-defining TV series needs no introduction to the legion of gays and lesbians who helped make it a hit. The show became a cultural phenomenon and turned its four female actresses into icons. It earned Parker an Emmy and four Golden Globe awards for her portrayal of the smart, successful New York single girl Carrie Bradshaw. It also solidified her status as a favorite of the gay community.

Remarks Parker of her high homo standing: "My impression is that -- and this is very generally speaking -- the gay community is always first to the party. They'll always take a chance on the unknown. They're always more curious. And in terms of Sex and the City, they came and were very early supporters of the show. So if they have any affection for me at all and if I am in good standing with them, I feel like it's been a reciprocal relationship because they've had a great amount to do with any of the success that I've had."

Sure, there are other reasons for Parker's lofty status with culturally savvy homos. You can credit her background as a ballet dancer, veteran theater actress and Broadway leading lady. She also has lots of well-known gay friends. But perhaps the LGBT community genuinely appreciates how Parker transformed herself from an actress known mostly for brainy, cerebral roles into a sophisticated and alluring A-list star.

Meanwhile, her new film, Failure to Launch, could give off some gay vibes. But don't expect to see the Sexiest Man Alive getting all Brokeback Mountain on us. Although Parker says that there will still plenty to look at thanks to both McConaughey and sexy sidekick Bradley Copper. She also believes that the gay community will love the film's breezy, screwball charms.

Parker's character in the film is the smart, successful and beautiful Paula, a professional motivator who helps get grown men who are still living at home with mom and dad to cut the cord and leave the nest. "Through research, my character has determined that men develop self-esteem and confidence more often than not in romantic relationships," she explains. "So she creates this business model where she gets hired by frustrated parents, she pretends to fall in love with their sons, the guys move out of the house, and then she breaks up with them."

But when Paula is hired by the parents of the fun-loving, good-natured hottie Tripp (McConaughey), her usual plans go awry. Not only is this slacker determined to enjoy the residual benefits of living with the 'rents -- freshly folded laundry, home-cooked meals and no mortgage payments -- but his handsome good looks and laid-back charm sparks Paula's own inner-yearnings. She soon finds herself falling in love with the guy. Along for the ride are Tripp's best friends, Demo and the wisecracking Ace (Bradley Cooper and Justin Bartha), his frustrated parents (played by Kathy Bates and NFL Hall-of-Famer Terry Bradshaw), and Paula's jaded, unlucky-in-love roommate Kit (Zooey Deschanel).

While reading the script, Parker latched onto the hidden reasons that Paula had chosen her occupation. "I think it's a way of avoiding her own personal life, a way of avoiding her own issues with intimacy, and maybe even her own ability to really mature in a way that is expected of someone her age," observes the actress.

Fans of Sex and the City will remember that Parker and McConaughey have teamed together before, during the series' third season when the girls all went out to L.A. for a little fun and sun. "He played himself in one episode, which was really bold, except maybe he wasn't really playing himself," says Parker. "He was more like a lunatic movie star. And he was really funny."

Parker explains that she was drawn to the lighthearted comedy of Failure to Launch because it offered a contrast to the difficult characters and complex themes of the two films that bookend it. In last winter's The Family Stone, Parker played a prickly, brittle business executive spending the holidays with her boyfriend's progressive, middle class family. The role was a wholesale departure from both Paula and the lovable Carrie Bradshaw. In the upcoming, provocative film Spinning Into Butter, which Parker is producing as well, the actress plays a dean at a progressive New England college dealing with an escalating series of threats against a black student. In the ensuing fallout, her character is forced to examine her own racial prejudices.

"Both of those movies are very different than Failure to Launch and also very different from each other. [Launch] is a really nice romantic comedy-like romp. It has no pretensions of anything else, which is great. It just kind of seemed like the perfect movie to go in between [the other two films]."

When Parker first embarked on the post-Sex and the City phase of her career, she says that she didn't necessarily have a plan for the type of movies she wanted to focus on. But she knew that she wanted to go after parts that would expand her acting horizons. "I was thankfully encouraged by counsel to not make any quick decisions, but to be really smart and careful and wise and prudent about the kind of choices I made... I think it's incumbent upon us as actors to really challenge ourselves and do new and different things. While the show was the safest and happiest place I've ever been, and certainly a lucrative and artistically satisfying place to be, one can't and shouldn't do it forever."

Of course, Parker was already a well-known actress long before she became Carrie Bradshaw. She launched her career by playing teenagers challenging authority in such '80s classics as Footloose and Girls Just Want to Have Fun, then graduated to more adult roles in films like L.A. Story and Honeymoon in Vegas. Yet her fame shot to stratospheric levels with the remarkable success of Sex and the City.

"It changed the entire landscape of my career and certainly our lives," she says of the show's success and how it impacted her, her husband Matthew Broderick and their young son. "There are just a lot more opportunities. I can think of things differently and be more confident about waiting and saying, 'no,' to projects."

Although she is now intimately more familiar with the drawbacks of celebrity-like paparazzi planted outside her Greenwich Village townhouse, the actress says that she wouldn't trade the experience of Sex and the City for anything. "As it grew and grew, it always took us by surprise -- the kind of relationship that the audience had to it and the way it became part of pop culture and the zeitgeist," says Parker. "And to be mentioned in [New York Times columnist] Maureen Dowd's column more than once! It was really weird, but also thrilling ... Being in people's homes for that long certainly changes your relationship with the public. But, I mean, who wants to be on a show that nobody cares about?"

So while Sex and the City helped open the door for Parker to look at new and different kinds of roles, she's hoping that Failure to Launch will be the launching pad to an even greater phase of her acting career. Of course, it can't hurt to have an enthusiastic gay fan base for support, not to mention the Sexiest Man Alive as your onscreen love interest. "I hope the gay community likes it. They'll certainly like seeing Matthew McConaughey!"