Cynthia Nixon

Cynthia Nixon

Nixon at the 2009 premiere of An Englishman in New York
Born Cynthia Ellen Nixon
April 9, 1966 (1966-04-09) (age 44)
, United States
Occupation Actress
Years active 1978–present
Partner Danny Mozes (1988–2003)
Christine Marinoni (2004–present)

Cynthia Ellen Nixon (born April 9, 1966) is an American actress, known for her portrayal of Miranda Hobbes in the HBO series Sex and the City (1998–2004). She is an Emmy-, Tony- and Grammy Award-winning actress.

Contents

Early life and career

Nixon was born in New York City, New York, the daughter of Anne Knoll, an actress, and Walter Nixon, a radio journalist.[1][2] Her first onscreen appearance was as an imposter on To Tell the Truth, where her mother worked. She began acting at age 12 as the object of a wealthy schoolmate's crush in The Seven Wishes of a Rich Kid, a 1979 ABC Afterschool Special. She made her feature debut co-starring with Kristy McNichol and Tatum O'Neal in Little Darlings (1980). She made her Broadway debut as Dinah Lord in a 1980 revival of The Philadelphia Story. Alternating between film, TV and stage she did projects like the 1982 ABC-movie My Body, My Child, the features Prince of the City (1981) and I Am the Cheese (1983) and the 1982 off-Broadway productions of John Guare's Lydie Breeze. In 1985 she appeared alongside Jeff Daniels in Lanford Wilson's Lemon Sky at Second Stage Theatre.

Nixon graduated from Hunter College High School,[3] and made theatrical history while a freshman at Barnard College in 1984, simultaneously appearing in two hit Broadway plays directed by Mike Nichols.[4] These were The Real Thing, where Nixon played the daughter of Jeremy Irons and Christine Baranski; and Hurlyburly, where she played a young woman who encounters sleazy Hollywood executives. The two theaters were just two blocks apart and Nixon's roles were both short, so she could run from one to the other.

She landed her first major supporting part in a movie as an intelligent teenager who aids her boyfriend (Christopher Collet) in building a nuclear bomb in Marshall Brickman's The Manhattan Project (1986).[5] Nixon was part of the cast of the NBC miniseries The Murder of Mary Phagan (NBC, 1988) starring Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey and portrayed the daughter of a presidential candidate (Michael Murphy) in Tanner '88 (also 1988), Robert Altman's political satire for HBO. She reprised the role for the 2004 sequel Tanner on Tanner.

1990s

Nixon at the Berlin premiere of Sex and the City: The Movie, 2008.

On stage, Nixon portrayed Juliet in a 1988 New York Shakespeare Festival production of Romeo and Juliet and acted in the workshop production of Wendy Wasserstein's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Heidi Chronicles, playing several characters after it came to Broadway in 1989. She replaced Marcia Gay Harden as Harper Pitt in Tony Kushner's landmark two-part Angels in America (1994), received a Tony nomination for her performance in Indiscretions (Les Parents Terribles) (1996, her sixth Broadway show) and, though she originally lost the part to another actress, eventually took over the role of Lala Levy in the Tony-winning The Last Night of Ballyhoo (1997).

Nixon was a founding member of the theatrical troupe The Drama Dept., which included Sarah Jessica Parker, Dylan Baker, John Cameron Mitchell and Billy Crudup among its actors, appearing in the group's productions of Kingdom on Earth (1996), June Moon and As Bees in Honey Drown (both 1997), Hope is the Thing with Feathers (1998), and The Country Club (1999).

Nixon has contributed supporting performances to Addams Family Values (1993), Baby's Day Out (1994), Marvin's Room (1996) and The Out-of-Towners (1999)

Stardom

She raised her profile significantly as one of the four regulars of HBO's successful comedy Sex and the City (1998–2004), as the lawyer Miranda Hobbes. After Emmy nominations as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2002 and 2003, Nixon took home the trophy in 2004 for the series' final season.

Nixon, John Hurt and Swoosie Kurtz at the premiere of An Englishman in New York.

The immense popularity of the series led Nixon to enjoy her first leading role in a feature, playing a video artist who falls in love, despite her best efforts to avoid commitment, with a bisexual actor who just happens to be dating a gay man (her best friend) in Advice From a Caterpillar (2000), as well as starring opposite Scott Bakula in the holiday telepic Papa's Angels (2000). In 2002 she also landed a role in the indie comedy Igby Goes Down, and her turn in the theatrical production of Clare Booth Luce's play The Women was captured for PBS' Stage On Screen series.

Post-Sex in the City, Nixon did a guest stint on ER in 2005 as a mother who undergoes a tricky procedure to lessen the effects of a debilitating stroke. She followed up with a turn as Eleanor Roosevelt for HBO's Warm Springs (2005), which chronicled Franklin Delano Roosevelt's quest for a miracle cure for his polio. Nixon earned an Emmy nomination as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for her performance. In December 2005, she appeared in the Fox hit series House in the episode "Deception", as a patient who suffers a seizure and matches wits with Dr. House (Hugh Laurie).

In 2006, Nixon won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Play) for David Lindsay-Abaire's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Rabbit Hole. In 2008, she revived her role as Miranda Hobbes in the Sex and the City feature film, directed by HBO executive producer Michael Patrick King and co-starring the cast of the original series.[6] Also in 2008, she won an Emmy for her guest appearance in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, where she portrayed a woman with dissociative identity disorder.

In 2009, Nixon won the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album along with Beau Bridges and Blair Underwood for the album An Inconvenient Truth (Al Gore), making her the 14th person to win the prestigious Emmy/Tony/Grammy triple crown.

It was announced in June 2010 that Nixon will appear in four episodes of Showtime's upcoming series The Big C.[7]

Personal life

Nixon has two children, daughter Samantha (b. 1995) and son Charles Ezekiel (b. 2002),[8] with Danny Mozes, an English professor, with whom she was in a relationship from 1988 to 2003.[9][10]

Nixon began dating education activist Christine Marinoni in January 2004.[11] Media reports of the relationship started surfacing in September of the same year.[12] In February 2005, the New York Post and other sources reported that Nixon had moved to Brooklyn to live with Marinoni. However, Nixon told The New York Times in January 2006 that she had not moved and that keeping her kids in their Manhattan public schools took priority. Discussing her relationship in an interview in New York Magazine in 2006, Nixon stated that she never felt any struggle with her sexuality: "I never felt like there was an unconscious part of me around that woke up or that came out of the closet; there wasn't a struggle, there wasn't an attempt to suppress. I met this woman, I fell in love with her, and I'm a public figure."[13] In an interview in May 2007, she said:

“ In terms of sexual orientation I don’t really feel I’ve changed... 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.[11] ”

In March 2008, Fox News reported that Nixon has been in a relationship with Marinoni since 2003, and quoted Nixon as saying, "I'm in a fantastic relationship. It's been about four years."[14] In April 2008, she received an award from the Point Foundation, which provides scholarships to gay students in the U.S., for being a role model for young gay people.[15] At a rally in support of same-sex marriage on May 17, 2009, Nixon announced that she and Marinoni had become engaged the month before.[16][17] Nixon made the announcement during the Love, Peace and Marriage Equality rally in New York. She told the crowd there that she would soon walk down the aisle with Marinoni, reports Contactmusic. Nixon’s Sex and the City co-star Kristin Davis, who also lent her support to the gay rights event, was also there when the announcement was made.

Breast cancer

In an interview with Good Morning America that aired on April 15, 2008, Nixon announced that she battled breast cancer, after being diagnosed during a routine mammogram in October 2006.[18] Initially she did not go public because of the stigma involved,[19] but since then, she not only has openly admitted that she had cancer, she has become a breast cancer activist, and was able to convince the head of NBC to air her breast cancer special in a prime time program.[19] In 2008, she began to serve as Ambassador for Susan G. Komen for the Cure.[20]

Activism

On April 1, 2010, Cynthia Nixon joined Cyndi Lauper in the launch of her Give a Damn campaign to bring a wider awareness of discrimination of the GLBT community as part of her True Colors Fund. The campaign is to bring straight people to stand up with the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered community and stop the discrimination. Other names included in the campaign are Whoopi Goldberg, Jason Mraz, Elton John, Judith Light, Kim Kardashian, Clay Aiken, Sharon Osbourne and Kelly Osbourne. Anna Paquin is also part of the campaign and came out as bisexual. This news clogged the Give A Damn website.[21] On September 6, 2010, Cynthia Nixon cosigned a letter supporting Israeli actors who declared they would refuse to appear in the Samarian town of Ariel due to their opposition to Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria. [22]

Filmography

Year Film Role Notes
1980 Little Darlings Sunshine
1981 Prince of the City Jeannie
1982 My Body, My Child Nancy TV movie
1983 I Am the Cheese Amy Hertz
1984 Amadeus Lorl
1986 Manhattan Project Jenny Anderman Nominated for a Young Artist Award
1987 O.C. and Stiggs Michelle
1988 Tanner '88 Alexandra (Alex) TV series
The Murder of Mary Phagan Doreen
1989 Let It Ride Evangeline
1990 Law & Order Laura di Biasi TV - Episode: Subterranean homeboy blues
1991 Love, Lies and Murder Donna TV
1993 The Pelican Brief Alice Stark
Murder She Wrote TV - Episode: Threshold of Fear
Addams Family Values Heather
Through an Open Window Short
1994 Baby's Day Out Gilbertine
1996 Marvin's Room Retirement Home Director
1999 The Outer Limits Trudy TV - Episode: Alien Radio
2000 Papa's Angels Sharon Jenkins
2001 Advice From a Caterpillar Missy
2002 Igby Goes Down Mrs. Piggee
Kiss Kiss, Dahlings/The Last Mile
1998–2004 Sex and the City Miranda Hobbes Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress – Comedy Series - Nominated, 2002, 2003; Won 2004
Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film - Nominated, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003
Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series - Nominated, 2000, 2002, 2004; Won 2001, 2003
Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress – Television Series - Nominated, 2002
2005 Rabbit Hole Becca Won - 2006 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play
Warm Springs Eleanor Roosevelt Nominated - Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress – Miniseries or a Movie
ER A stroke victim TV
House Anica TV - Episode: Deception (House)
Little Manhattan Leslie
2006 One Last Thing... Carol
2007 The Babysitters Gail Beltran
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Janice 2008 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress – Drama Series
2008 Sex and the City: The Movie Miranda Hobbes
2009 Lymelife Melissa Bragg
An Englishman in New York Penny Arcade
2010 Sex and the City 2 Miranda Hobbes Nominated People's Choice Awards For Favorite Cast

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ "The lesbian love affair you WON'T see in Sex and the City". Daily Mail (London). 2008-05-15. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-566486/The-lesbian-love-affair-WONT-Sex-City.html. 
  2. ↑ Cynthia Nixon Biography (1966-)
  3. ↑ "Cynthia Nixon Addresses Hunter College High School Graduates". www.hunter.cuny.edu. 2004-06-24. http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/news/newsreleases/2004/nixon.shtml. Retrieved 2008-11-12. 
  4. ↑ "Cynthia Nixon Biography". Yahoo! Movies. http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/contributor/1800093058/bio. 
  5. ↑ Bob Considine (2008-05-30). "‘Sex’ star Cynthia Nixon on her cancer, girlfriend". MSNBC. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24878731/. Retrieved 2008-11-12. 
  6. ↑ ""Sex and the City" Movie Close to Green Light". ABC News. 2006-11-14. http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=entertainment&id=4761610. 
  7. ↑ "Cynthia Nixon to Take on The Big C with 4 Episode Arc". TVGuide.com. http://www.tvguide.com/News/Cynthia-Nixon-BigC-1019860.aspx. 
  8. ↑ Stephen M. Silverman (2002-12-17). "'Sex' Arrival: A Boy for Cynthia Nixon". People. http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,625204,00.html. Retrieved 2008-11-12. 
  9. ↑ Lloyd Grove; Elisa Lipsky-Karasz (2003-10-23). "'Sex' Star Splits With Lover". New York Daily News. http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/gossip/2003/10/28/2003-10-28__sex__star_splits_with_lover.html. Retrieved 2008-11-12. 
  10. ↑ Stephen M. Silverman (2008-04-16). "Cynthia Nixon's Latest Role: Breast Cancer Advocate – and Survivor". People. http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20191916,00.html. Retrieved 2008-11-12. 
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 John Hiscock (2008-05-13). "Sex and the City's Cynthia Nixon: 'I'm just a woman in love with a woman'". London: Daily Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/05/13/bfnixon113.xml. Retrieved 2008-05-25. 
  12. ↑ Warn, Sarah (2004-09-24). "Cynthia Nixon in Relationship With a Woman". AfterEllen.com. http://www.afterellen.com/People/92004/cynthianixon.html. Retrieved 2007-10-31 
  13. ↑ Nussbaum, Emily (2006-09-21). "Educating Cynthia: How the Former Miranda Learned to Hide in Plain Sight". New York Magazine. http://nymag.com/arts/theater/profiles/21647. 
  14. ↑ "'Sex and the City' Star Cynthia Nixon Discusses 'Fantastic' Lesbian Relationship". Fox News. 2008-03-06. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,335528,00.html. 
  15. ↑ Hilton, Beth (2008-04-09). "'SATC' star honoured to be gay role model". Digital Spy. http://nymag.com/arts/theater/profiles/21647. 
  16. ↑ "Cynthia Nixon Announces Engagement". Access Hollywood. May 17, 2009. http://www.accesshollywood.com/cynthia-nixon-announces-engagement_article_18045. Retrieved 2009-05-18. 
  17. ↑ http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20279573,00.html
  18. ↑ "Cynthia Nixon Beats Breast Cancer, Becomes Advocate". ABC News. http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=4656719&page=1. 
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 "Celebrities Inspiration Roundup". American Breast Cancer Guide. http://www.abcgonline.com/archive/2005/01_cel/index.htm. 
  20. ↑ "Cynthia Nixon to Serve as Ambassador for Susan G. Komen for the Cure". Susan G. Komen for the Cure. http://cms.komen.org/komen/NewsEvents/KomenNews/080415_Nixon_Ambassador. 
  21. ↑ http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/slideshow/bisexual-stars-7577467
  22. ↑ http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3950251,00.html

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