"I always thought that there would be a third act, it has not happened yet," noted, without pathos, the star of soon 61 years, in front of the 1,400 people who came Tuesday to attend his masterclass in Lille, at the festival Series Mania.

"You're going to make me cry," said the actress, after receiving a standing ovation and before giving herself up for more than an hour.

The next day, this charismatic redhead was surprised again to see a crowd of journalists "interested in her", during a round table.

Yet she is well aware of her status as an icon of the small screen, which was for her both a "blessing and a curse".

"It's been painful, because if you're playing an iconic character, people have to forget about it and it takes time," says the one who has long been associated with "Crazy Kimberly", the crazy "Melrose Place" in the 90s.

It is this role of villain that revealed her to the general public, after forays into series like "Cheers", "West Coast" or "Arabesque". And who held her back.

"I couldn't find a job, I almost stopped everything" to become a therapist, said the actress, who graduated in psychology.

However, "my work was very good, I can say it now because I am older," says this victim of the "stigma" related to soap operas, after re-watching in Lille sequences of "Melrose Place".

Especially this striking scene where his character Kimberly, who was thought to be dead after an accident, reappears, removes his wig, discovering a huge scar on the skull.

"Taboo"

In 2004, she landed the role of Bree Van de Kamp in "Desperate Housewives".

"Originally I wanted the role of Mary Alice (voice-over of the series that we see very little on screen)" but Marc Cherry, the creator, decided otherwise. "And it changed my life."

Bree Van de Kamp, Wisteria Lane's conservative and stuck housewife, has been raising it to the top for eight years and since... Not much.

The actresses of "Desesperate Housewives", Felicity Huffman (l), Teri Hatcher (2nd l), Nicolette Sheridan (3rd d), Eva Longoria (2nd d) and Marcia Cross (rd) with the creator of the series Marc Cherry (3rd l), awarded a Golden Globes Awards, January 16, 2006 in Beverly Hills © ROBYN BECK / AFP / Archives

"It was a revolution to have quadra heroines in +Desperate Housewives+", but despite progress in diversity, the issue of older women remains, according to her, "taboo" on American television.

"With a movie star like Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon or Meryl Streep (starring in 'Big Little Lies'), you can mount something," but "for people like me, there's not much."

She also regrets not having fulfilled her dreams of theatre. After joining the Juilliard Conservatory in New York at the age of 18, she began by treading the boards before turning to TV to "get noticed", on the advice of her agent.

Marcia Cross uses in any case her notoriety for the good cause, claiming loud and clear to have had cancer caused by the papillomavirus. "Nobody wants to hear that word, but I had to talk about it to raise awareness."

She also salutes the French militancy, while demonstrators against the pension reform have a little heckled her coming to Lille, and says she prefers "the garbage cans in the street to the problems we have in the United States".

And "would love" to return to France to play opposite Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu in "Emily in Paris", the new hit series of Darren Star, the creator of "Melrose Place". Good luck with that...

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