Cynthia Ellen Nixon (born April 9, 1966) is native New Yorker, multi-award-winning actress and activist and former candidate for Governor of New York State in 2018. For her portrayal of Miranda Hobbes in the HBO series Sex and the City (1998–2004), she won the 2004 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. She reprised the role in the films Sex and the City (2008) and Sex and the City 2 (2010). Her other film credits include Amadeus (1984), James White (2015), and playing Emily Dickinson in A Quiet Passion (2016).
In 1984, while a freshman at Barnard College, Nixon made theatrical history by simultaneously appearing in two hit Broadway plays directed by Mike Nichols. They were The Real Thing, where she 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. Onscreen, she played the role of Salieri's maid/spy, Lorl, in Amadeus (1984). In 1985, she appeared alongside Jeff Daniels in Lanford Wilson's Lemon Sky at Second Stage Theatre.
Nixon had made her Broadway debut at 14 in the 1980 revival of The Philadelphia Story. Her other Broadway credits include The Real Thing (1983), Hurlyburly (1983), Indiscretions (1995), The Women (2001), and Wit (2012). She won the 2006 Tony Award for best Actress in a Play for Rabbit Hole, the 2008 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, the 2009 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for An Inconvenient Truth, and the 2017 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for The Little Foxes. Her other television roles include playing political figures Eleanor Roosevelt in Warm Springs (2005), Michele Davis in Too Big to Fail (2011), and playing Nancy Reagan in the 2016 television film Killing Reagan.
Nixon was born in Manhattan, the only child of Walter Elmer Nixon Jr. (1920–1998), a radio journalist from Texas, and Anne Elizabeth (née Knoll; died 2013), an actress originally from Chicago. She credits her mother with "indoctrinating" her into theatre. Nixon was an actress all through her years at Hunter College Elementary School and Hunter College High School (class of 1984), often taking time away from school to perform in film and on stage. Nixon also acted in order to pay her way through Barnard College, where she received a B.A in English Literature. Nixon was also a student in the Semester at Sea Program in the Spring of 1986.
On March 19, 2018, Nixon announced her campaign for Governor of New York as a challenger to Democratic incumbent Andrew Cuomo. Her platform focused on income inequality, renewable energy, establishing universal health care, stopping mass incarceration in the United States, and protecting undocumented children from deportation. She lost in the Democratic primary to Cuomo on September 13, 2018, with 34% of the vote to his 66%. Nixon was nominated as the gubernatorial candidate for the Working Families Party; the Party threw its support to Cuomo after Nixon lost in the Democratic primary.
Nixon has been an advocate for LGBT rights in the United States, particularly the right of same-sex marriage. She met her wife at a 2002 gay rights rally, and announced her engagement at a rally for New York marriage equality in 2009. She received the Yale University Artist for Equality award in 2013 and a Visibility Award from the Human Rights Campaign in 2018. A breast cancer survivor since being diagnosed in 2006, she has also become an activist for breast cancer, serving as an Ambassador for Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Other charities that she has supported include Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, American Heart Association, Feed the Children, United Cerebral Palsy and the Actors Fund of America.
She lobbied for same-sex marriage in New York in 2011 and worked with the Fight Back New York PAC to vote out politicians who didn’t support marriage equality. She is a spokesperson for the Alliance for Quality Education, and was arrested in 2002 while protesting proposed school budget cuts.
Cynthia describes herself as bi-sexual. From 1988 to 2003, she was in a relationship with schoolteacher Danny Mozes. They have two children together. In June 2018, Nixon revealed that their older child is transgender. In 2004, Nixon began dating education activist Christine Marinoni. They became engaged in April 2009, and married in New York City on May 27, 2012. Marinoni gave birth to a son, Max Ellington, in 2011.
Sources include wikipedia, biography.com, vogue, looktothestars.org