Sarah Jessica Parker struggled to cope with "mean" comments about her appearance.

The 60-year-old actress noticed a shift in how people spoke about her after she landed the role of Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City back in, and she admitted the sudden attention was "a real test of my coping mechanisms".

Asked what she struggled with most, she told the Call Her Daddy podcast: "Just discussions of my physical person.

"Like stuff that I couldn't change, and wouldn't change, and had never considered changing, or even still after hearing something that was like, 'What? Somebody would say that?'

"Even still… no interest in changing it."

The actress, who has reprised the role of Carrie in spin-off series And Just Like That star, noted that the initial backlash was tough in a time before social media without a chance to response.

She added: "I didn't feel like I could sit in a room, and someone would say to me, 'You're really unattractive.'

"And then I could say, 'Wow, um, well first of all, that's hard to hear. But second of all, why do you seem angry about it?'

"Or, 'Why do you feel it's necessary to say it?' "

Sarah recalled ringing her friends in tears after one unnamed magazine made a "really meal" comment about her appearance.

She said: "It was like a kick in the rubber parts.

"I was just like, 'Why is this a problem? Why is this deserving of your time? And why do you seem to delight in saying it?'

"I was sobbing because it felt so purposeful. And I think that's the only time I really cried about it."

Meanwhile, Jessica has opened up about the double stand in the way people judge female characters like Carrie.

She told the HuffPost UK: "It's always interesting to me that [this is] so condemned, but a male lead on a show can be a murderer, and people love him.

"And if a woman has an affair, or behaves poorly, or spends money foolishly […] there's a kind of punitive response to it.

"But I ultimately think that all those feelings are pretty fantastic. That kind of connection and those kinds of strong feelings, both positive and negative, are pretty wonderful.

"People are kind of captive in those moments to something, and I think that's perfectly fine. I just think, it's just interesting, the ways in which we judge women, and not men."