Kim’s grave error: Star loses fight over family headstone
AS BRASH Samantha Jones in Sex and the City, she was used to getting everything her own way.
But yesterday it emerged that actress Kim Cattrall has been forced to back down after losing a long-running dispute with relatives in Liverpool over a family gravestone. The 62-year-old was accused of a ‘total lack of respect’ after replacing the stone in her family plot.
Miss Cattrall’s cousin Michelle Cox, 51 – whose mother Edna is buried there – said she felt like she ‘ had been burgled’ when she saw the change during a visit on Christmas Day 2016.
Edna is buried at Holy Trinity, Wavertree, along with the ashes of her brother Dennis – Miss Cattrall’s father – and other members of the family.
The stone was specially commissioned by Miss Cattrall and inscribed with her own name in the expectation that she would one day be buried there.
The star was born in Liverpool but her parents took her to Canada when she was three months old. She moved to the US when she was 16 to pursue her acting career.
The inscription referred to her as ‘the Liverpool Cleopatra’ – a nod to her much-publicised return to the city in a production of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra in 2010. She also added the name of her father, who died in 2012.
The row led to almost two years of wrangling in an ecclesiastical court. Sir Mark Hedley, chancellor of the consistory court of the diocese of Liverpool, has now ordered that Miss Cattrall’s name and the Cleopatra reference be removed from the headstone.
It was taken away to be amended this month. He also ordered that Miss Cattrall pay for the changes, which must be completed and the headstone reinstated by next month.
Miss Cox has never met her famous cousin – their parents fell out after Edna married a man from Barbados. In 2016 she told the Mail: ‘It doesn’t seem right that someone who has spent the majority of her life in Canada and the US can come to Liverpool and reserve a grave simply by putting their name on it.’
She said the former canon of Holy Trinity wrongly assumed there were no surviving relatives to contact when Miss Cattrall applied to have the headstone changed. Miss Cattrall later hit back, saying: ‘The Cox family are not my family.’
A source close to the case said Miss Cox and her family were relieved the matter had been resolved. The source said: ‘It was about ensuring respect for the deceased. But most importantly the inscription was in very poor taste.
‘ They took a stand not because it was a celebrity involved but because they didn’t want it to happen to anyone else.’ Miss Cattrall has declined to comment.