(Lille) Unforgettable Bree Van de Kamp in Desperate Housewives, actress Marcia Cross is still hoping for an iconic new role, 11 years after bidding farewell to Wisteria Lane, aware of Hollywood’s cruelty, especially to women in mature age.

“I always thought there would be a third act, it hasn’t happened yet,” the soon-to-be 61-year-old star said without pathos to the 1,400 people who came to attend his master class on Tuesday. Lille, at the Series Mania festival.

“You’re going to make me cry,” said the actress, after receiving a standing ovation and before indulging for more than an hour.

The next day, this charismatic redhead was again surprised to see a crowd of journalists “taking an interest in her” during a round table.

However, 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 was painful, because if you’re playing an iconic character, people have to forget about it and that takes time,” says the one who was long associated with “Crazy Kimberly,” the crazy girl from Melrose Place in the 90s. .

It was this villainous role that revealed her to the general public, after forays into series such as Cheers, West Coast or Arabesque. And who held her back?

“I couldn’t find a job, I almost quit everything” to become a therapist, said the actress, a psychology graduate.

However, “my work was very good, I can say that now because I’m older”, says this victim of the “stigma” linked to soap operas, after having re-watched sequences of Melrose Place in Lille.

In particular this striking scene where her character Kimberly, who was believed to be dead after an accident, reappears, removes her wig, discovering a huge scar on her skull.

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

“Originally, I wanted the role of Mary Alice (voiceover from 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, the conservative, uptight housewife of Wisteria Lane, took her to the top for eight years and since… not much.

“It was revolutionary to have 40-something heroines in Desperate Housewives,” but despite progress in diversity, the issue of older women remains, she says, “taboo” on American television.

“With a movie star like Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, or Meryl Streep (starring in Big Little Lies), you can put something together,” but “for people like me, there’s not much -thing “.

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

In any case, Marcia Cross uses her notoriety for a good cause, claiming loud and clear to have had anal cancer caused by the papillomavirus. “No one wants to hear that word, but I had to talk about it to raise awareness.”

She also salutes French-style militancy, while demonstrators against the pension reform have a little heckled her coming to Lille, and says she prefers “trash 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 from Darren Star, the creator of Melrose Place. On good terms…