Samantha Jones is a fictional character created by Candace Bushnell who appears in the Sex and the City media franchise.

The character first appeared in Bushnell's newspaper column Sex and the City, which was published in The New York Observer from 1994 to 1996, and as a book of the same name in 1996.

A semi-fictionalized version of one of Bushnell's real-life friends, Samantha is a confident and sexually liberated woman in her forties with a propensity for dating multiple men.

Sex and the City was adapted into a television series of the same name that aired on HBO from 1998 to 2004, where Samantha was portrayed by Kim Cattrall.

It is known that she came from a working class background, and she spent most of her teenage years selling Dilly bars at Dairy Queen to earn pocket money.

Jones originally appeared in Candace Bushnell's column "Sex and the City" in The New York Observer, where she is introduced as a "40-ish movie producer" known for dating a multitude of younger men.

[8][9][10] Jones, the oldest of the group, is an independent publicist and a seductress who avoids emotional involvement at all costs, while satisfying every possible carnal desire imaginable.

In the early part of the series, she lives on the Upper East Side but ends up moving to an expensive apartment in the Meatpacking District in season three.

She faces the challenge head-on, playing with her look by wearing outrageous wigs, hats, and headscarves after she loses her hair to chemotherapy.

In one of the final episodes, she gives a speech for a cancer benefit dinner, and receives a standing ovation for removing her wig onstage and admitting that she was suffering with hot flashes.

While she remains faithful to Smith, she finds herself questioning whether or not her strained relationship with him should be continued as she simultaneously uses food as an outlet for her sexual desires for Dante, flagrantly gaining weight in the later stages of the movie.

Samantha is approached by an Arab sheikh to devise a PR campaign for his business, and he flies her and her friends on an all-expenses-paid luxury vacation to Abu Dhabi.

At the end of the movie, Samantha has sex with Rikhard in "the land of the free and home of the hormones", at an East Hampton sand dune.

When Carrie travels to Paris to spread Big's ashes, she texts Samantha, who agrees to meet in London and rekindle their lost friendship.

In the second season, Samantha briefly appears when she calls Carrie to tell her she will miss the "last supper" dinner party in her old apartment.

[11][12] Over the course of the series, she sleeps with plenty of interesting characters, including a man who will only "swing" with her if she takes an HIV test, a college student from the Midwest with the same name (Sam Jones) who is eager to lose his virginity, a guy with "funky spunk", and a trainer from her gym who brands her by shaving her pubic hair into a lightning bolt.

Unusually for Samantha, she doesn't have sex with him immediately, taking a leaf instead from Charlotte's book, because she felt he was a man she would marry.

In the last episode of season one, ("Oh Come All Ye Faithful") she tells Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda that he is only three inches long when hard, and that she does not even receive any pleasure out of giving him a blowjob because his penis is so small.

In a funny counterpoint to her predicament with James, in the second season episode "Ex and the City," Samantha meets Mr. Too Big, who warns her of his huge endowment as he undresses.

In season four, Samantha flirts with lesbianism, entering into a brief but serious relationship with an artist named Maria Reyes (Sônia Braga).

Though the two seemed well-matched, as they are both confident, highly successful, and like sleeping around and are uninterested in relationships, Samantha finds herself becoming increasingly attached to Richard.

Samantha likes that he is not intimidated by her success (in contrast to Carrie's ex-boyfriend, Jack Berger), and with her assistance, he quickly becomes a celebrity.

After a quick bout of clearly meaningless sex with Richard, during which he talks about himself, Samantha seeks out Smith, who has been waiting for her to realize she made a mistake and come back.

Their last scene together in the TV series shows the two having sex and Samantha enjoying herself; the previously unbloomed flowers have now begun to open.

In the movies, four years later, the pair are still together, with Samantha giving up her job and home to live in Los Angeles with him and be his publicist supporting his booming acting career.

She also won two ensemble Screen Actors Guild Awards, shared with her co-stars Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon.