SATC's Kim Cattrall Gets a Big Love Reality Check

Sex and the City star discovers her grandfather was a bigamist thanks to new U.K. reality show

Kim Cattrall really lives her life the HBO way.

Life imitated her Sex and the City character, Samantha Jones, when the 52-year-old hooked up with a chef 20 years her junior. He was hot and blond and very Smith Jarrod-esque. And not unlike the show's first movie spinoff, they went kaputz.

Now, Cattrall is finding out her life has a giant dose of another of the pay cable channel's hits: Big Love.

According to Britain's Northern Echo, the Golden Globe winner recently filmed an appearance on the U.K. television series, Who Do You Think You Are?, where stars trace their family trees. During that exploration, Cattrall discovered something rather unusual about her roots.

Her maternal grandfather, George Baugh, was a bigamist.

Cattrall's mother was 8 years old when Baugh left her and her sisters in 1939. He then married someone else, while still legally bound to Cattrall's grandmother.

"The most difficult thing was telling my mother and her sisters the truth of what became of their father," the actress tells ContactMusic.com. "I felt I was ruining their last fantastic hope of what became of him. He was unremarkable except in his selfishness."

However, after years of practicing forgiveness with pals Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda, the erstwhile Samantha is understanding.

"Ultimately, who am I to judge my grandfather? His story will eventually integrate into our lives and we'll carry on just like we've always done," she said. "We are British, after all. In the end, this became a story not about my grandfather's desertion, but about my mother and her two sisters surviving it. For that, I am profoundly proud and grateful."

Cattrall's episode of the reality series airs in the U.K. on Aug. 12. She joins Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon on the big screen in the Sex and the City movie sequel on May 28, 2010.