Cynthia Ellen Nixonis an American actress, activist, and politician best known for her role as Miranda Hobbes in the acclaimed HBO series Sex and the City.
Born and raised in Manhattan, New York, to a journalist father and an actress mother, Nixon excelled in the performing arts from a very young age. She began acting professionally in 1979 at the age of twelve, making regular appearances in movies, TV shows, and stage productions throughout the next two decades, including Little Darlings, the Oscar-winning Amadeus, The Manhattan Project, the HBO political mockumentary Tanner ‘88, and The Pelican Brief.
In 1998, Nixon landed her breakout role as one of the core stars on Sex and the City, which became one of the most culturally significant television shows of the era. She reprised her role as Miranda Hobbes, a bi character, in the sequel films Sex and the City and Sex and the City 2 as well as the sequel series And Just Like That….
Her acting has earned her numerous awards, including one Primetime Emmy Award for her role in Sex and the City (and another two nominations), an Emmy nomination for her portrayal of Eleanor Roosevelt in the 2005 TV movie Warm Springs, and a 2008 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In addition, she has won two Tony Awards for her stage performances, two Actors Awards (formerly Screen Actors Guild Awards), plus five nominations, and has been nominated for six Golden Globes. Nixon also won a Grammy Award in 2009 for her audio narration of former Vice President Al Gore’s climate change book An Inconvenient Truth, released alongside the documentary of the same name.
In 2018, Nixon ran to become governor of New York State, challenging the incumbent governor, Andrew Cuomo, for the Democratic Party nomination. Her campaign focused on income inequality, renewable energy, universal healthcare, stopping mass incarceration, and the rights of undocumented children. During the race, some of Cuomo’s surrogates accused Nixon of being an “unqualified lesbian”. Nixon responded: “It’s true that I never received my certificate from the Department of Lesbian Affairs, though in my defense, there’s a lot of paperwork required”. In the end, she lost the Democratic primary election to Cuomo, who went on to win the election for Governor before subsequently resigning in 2021 amid a sexual harassment scandal.
Nixon, who is bi herself, has been a longtime campaigner for LGBT rights, particularly for same-sex marriage and transgender rights (on Trans Day of Action in 2018, Nixon revealed that her eldest son, known as “Seph”, is transgender). She was awarded the Vita Russo Award by GLAAD in 2010 and the Visibility Award by the Human Rights Campaign in 2018.
Nixon has previously been in relationships with men, including a fifteen-year relationship with photographer Danny Mozes, her high-school classmate. They had two children together before splitting up in 2003. Nixon met her future wife, education activist Christine Marinoni, in 2001, before they started dating in 2004. They announced their engagement at a rally for marriage equality in 2009 and had a son together in 2011 before marrying in 2012.
Nixon has gone through a bit of an evolution over the years in terms of how she labels her sexual orientation. In a 2007 interview with The Telegraph, Nixon opened up a bit about her sexuality, pointing to, but not naming, her bisexuality:
In terms of sexual orientation, I don’t really feel I’ve changed. I don’t feel there was a hidden part of my sexuality that I wasn’t aware of. I’d been with men all my life, and I’d never fallen in love with a woman. But when I did, it didn’t seem so strange. I’m just a woman in love with another woman.
In a 2012 statement to The Advocate, she explicitly identified as bi, saying:
While I don’t often use the word, the technically precise term for my orientation is bisexual. I believe bisexuality is not a choice, it is a fact.
Later, in 2018, she identified herself as queer in an interview with Attitude:
Falling in love with my wife was one of the great delights and surprises of my life, but it didn’t seem like I became a whole new person, or like some door had been unlocked. […] It was like: “I have fallen in love with different people in my life and they’ve all been men before. Now, this is a woman and she is amazing.” So I feel like ‘queer’ is an umbrella term, and it includes my formerly straight self, too.