All Sex and the City fans have a favorite character, so in preparation of the movie’s release, we asked four die-hards to tell us why they love Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte or Samantha the best:

On the surface, Carrie Bradshaw and I are an easy match-up.

We're both newspaper columnists who stare into our Mac laptops, asking questions about our obsessions. We both brandish our credit cards a little too frequently. We're both perpetually single.

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Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw

And though I never literally longed to walk in her Manolo Blahnik strappy sandals, I could embrace Carrie's indulgence in fashion as a way of defining herself and retreating into a tangible fantasy. Food feels the same way for me.

But it runs deeper, this mutuality. Carrie's predilections and foibles were born in the minds of writers who famously inserted the entanglements of their lives into the character's escapades. Through Carrie, I found thirtysomething solace for my own personal failings, and encouragement in my own little professional triumphs.

It didn't start out that way. Initially, I just thought the show was enjoyably raunchy. During a tenacious cold in 2000, I rented the first and second seasons of Sex and the City, gobbling the episodes over a few days, chortling through my congestion. A subscription to HBO was placed shortly thereafter.

As the years went on, Sarah Jessica Parker and the show's writers gave Carrie an emotional richness – call it a hopeful melancholy – to melt the brittle vapidity the character possessed at the show's inception. Carrie Bradshaw detractors are quick to point out her icky self-absorption, but I loved her flaws. She had an affair with her married ex. She declined to wed a solidly decent man. She occasionally failed to be a good friend when mired in her own troubles, or when on the hunt for a new pair of shoes.

All these errors in judgment endeared her to me more, particularly as the recovery from her pratfalls became less swift (Season 5, which executive producer Michael Patrick King dubbed "the season without men," is my favorite). It helped me feel less alone with – and laugh at, and maybe even work on correcting – my shortcomings.

So I'll publicly admit it: I've missed you, Carrie. See you at the movies.

Bill Addison

My friends always assumed I was a Carrie-wannabe: the shoes, the closet, the fabulous writing career she worked on – at most – 20 minutes a week. But in reality, Carrie was an endless source of frustration; don't even get me started on how she treated Aidan.

No, my girl was always Charlotte, Kristin Davis' wide-eyed optimist who managed to be both ardently self-absorbed and completely compassionate. She always tickled us with the lovely notion that the show's title may have included sex, but deep down it was about the search for romance.

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Kristin Davis as Charlotte York-Goldenblatt

Charlotte reminded me of ditzy Georgette on The Mary Tyler Moore Show – that aura of innocence, accurate or not, granted her dispensation to do and say the wildest things.

When something outrageous was suggested to Charlotte – as in a Season 1 episode when a boyfriend asked her for a threesome – Ms. Davis would simultaneously open her mouth and eyes wide, wide, wider. She did the best "shock and awe" face I've ever seen, and what made it even better was Ms. Davis letting us see, even as she shuddered in horror, that she was secretly contemplating doing whatever outrageous deed had been proposed.

Charlotte also perfectly channeled the inner junior-high girl lurking in every woman. A line from Episode 15 summed it up: "When Charlotte really liked a guy, she said his whole name; it helped her to imagine their monogrammed towels."

And despite her seeming naiveté, Charlotte instigated some of the show's most memorable pushing-the-envelope moments: the tantric sex workshop in Season 2, the "used-date party" from Season 3, the hilarious revelation in Season 4 that a particular part of her anatomy was "depressed."

My all-time favorite Charlotte episodes were in Season 1, when she gets hopelessly addicted to a certain device kept in her bedside table, and the whole arc during the last two seasons when she's falling in love and marrying Harry.

Charlotte's perseverance in finding love and family – even after surviving impotent Trey, his psycho mother Bunny and a heartbreaking miscarriage – gave us all hope.

Joy Tipping

Of all the Sex and the City women, Miranda Hobbes is the least glamorous.

She brings common sense to a world of whimsy. She's the short, sensible hairdo to Carrie's wild mane. And sometimes, she's the cold water on all that passion.

But she is crucial.

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Cynthia Nixon as Miranda Hobbs

The show would have essentially blown away if not for Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), whom Carrie once called "my cynical touchstone." Without the redhead, there would be no fights in a thrift store about Mr. Big, and nobody to stop the other ladies from obsessing about dudes 24/7. Yes, she's controlling, but her high-powered Manhattan heart is in the right place.

And so is her wit. One of my all-time favorite lines was uttered as Miranda shopped for a wedding gown: "I said no white, no ivory, no nothing that says 'virgin.' I have a child. The jig is up."

Speaking of her child, that's when Miranda's role got great. She's no Donna Reed, but Miranda effortlessly transformed into the universal working mom.

Case in point: Despite staying late at the law office almost every night and missing Brady's bedtime, her bosses called her out for job performance.

"As far as the McKenzie brief, Miranda Hobbes is kicking ... [expletive]," she told them. "Where I'm doing a bad job is at home."

I remember pausing my TiVo at that moment as the tears welled up. A lot of us have been there, in that constant tug-of-war where neither side wins.

I cried again when she and Steve finally professed their love, while hiding in the laundry room during Brady's first birthday party. It was a rare mushy moment for Miranda – and that's a relief. Miranda and Carrie were arguably the closest pals in the bunch – and that just made their conflicts more intense. During their thrift-store fight about Big, Miranda didn't hold back, saying, "Every time you get near him, you turn into this pathetic, needy, insecure victim."

I could never say that to someone, even if it was for her own good. And I don't think I have a friend who would do that with me.

But I kinda wish I did.

Darla Atlas

Samantha has always been the key to the Sex and the City cocktail, shaking things up by living her life unapologetically. Played by Kim Cattrall, her confidence with men and sex, as well as her loyalty to friends, made her the show's unlikely role model.

Maybe she seemed like a nymphomaniac, sleeping her way through Manhattan, but we could learn something about standing up for ourselves from her. When she landed her account with Richard, the hotel magnate and future boyfriend, it was after berating him for imposing a double standard on her: He wasn't going to hire her to do his PR because of her indiscretions with one of his architects. But if Samantha were a man, Richard wouldn't have thought twice about offering the job.

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Kim Cattrall as Samantha Jones

Even in the few relationships Samantha had, her free spirit reigned. She broke up with Richard, tired of guessing whether he was cheating again, by saying "I love you, but I love myself more." She called it quits with the artist Maria after giving lesbianism a shot because she wanted less talking and more sex. And with the much younger Smith, she dared not fall for him until he broke down her walls and stood by her through breast cancer, baldness and loss of libido.

At times, Samantha made even her closest friends uncomfortable just by being herself. She thought nothing of horrifying Carrie by showing her a botched dye job of the most delicate of areas. And when she shared the nude photos she had taken of herself over breakfast, Charlotte almost choked.

But brazen behavior aside, Samantha's there for her friends in unexpected ways sometimes, such as when she offered her long-awaited hair appointment to Miranda when Miranda was overwhelmed with new baby Brady. And when Samantha told Big that she would hurt him if he ever hurt Carrie because Carrie was not as strong as Big thought she was, she meant it.

Through all the antics – throwing water on loud shemales outside her window, getting thrown out of a Playboy Mansion party by Hugh Hefner, tearing off her wig in an overheated fit during a speech for cancer survivors – Samantha's uninhibited nature was never less than inspiring. When others only thought, she acted.

Misty Bailey