Cynthia Nixon

Nixon's first onscreen appearance was as an imposter on To Tell the Truth, where her mother worked. She began acting at 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 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.

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 was the guest star in the second episode of the long running NBC television series Law & Order. She played the role of an agoraphobic woman in a February 1993 episode of Murder, She Wrote, titled "Threshold of Fear".

From 1988 to 2003, Nixon was in a relationship with schoolteacher Danny Mozes. They have two children together. In June 2018, Nixon revealed that their older child is transgender.

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 television movie 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 Boothe Luce's play The Women was captured for PBS' Stage on Screen series.

She raised her profile significantly as one of the four regulars on HBO's successful comedy Sex and the City (1998–2004), as the lawyer Miranda Hobbes. Nixon received three Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series (2002, 2003, 2004), winning the award in 2004, for the show's final season.

In 2004, Nixon began dating education activist Christine Marinoni. Nixon and Marinoni became engaged in April 2009, and married in New York City on May 27, 2012, with Nixon wearing a custom-made, pale green dress by Carolina Herrera. Marinoni gave birth to a son, Max Ellington, in 2011.

Post-Sex and the City, Nixon made a guest appearance 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 TV series House in the episode "Deception", as a patient who suffers a seizure.

In 2006, she appeared in David Lindsay-Abaire's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Rabbit Hole in a Manhattan Theatre Club production, and won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Play). (This part was later played by Nicole Kidman in the movie adaptation of the play.) 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.

In October 2006, Nixon was diagnosed with breast cancer during a routine mammography. She initially decided not to go public with her illness because she feared it might hurt her career, but in April 2008, she announced her battle with the disease in an interview with Good Morning America. Since then, Nixon has become a breast cancer activist. She convinced the head of NBC to air her breast cancer special in a prime time program, and became an Ambassador for Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

Also in 2008, she won an Emmy for her guest appearance in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, portraying a woman pretending to have dissociative identity disorder. In 2008, Nixon made a brief uncredited cameo in the comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall. She appears in the background when Jason Segel's character mimics characters from Sex and the City at a bar.

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).

In March 2010, Nixon received the Vito Russo Award at the GLAAD Media Awards. The award is presented to an openly LGBT media professional "who has made a significant difference in promoting equality for the LGBT community". It was announced in June 2010 that Nixon would appear in four episodes of the Showtime series The Big C.

In 2012, Nixon starred as Professor Vivian Bearing in the Broadway debut of Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize–winning play Wit. Produced by the Manhattan Theatre Club, the play opened January 26, 2012 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Nixon received a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Play for the performance.

In 2012, Nixon also starred as Petranilla in the TV miniseries of Ken Follett's World Without End broadcast on the ReelzChannel, alongside Ben Chaplin, Peter Firth, Charlotte Riley, and Miranda Richardson.

Regarding her sexual orientation, Nixon remarked in 2007: "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." She identified herself as bisexual in 2012. Prior to the legalization of same-sex marriage in Washington state (Marinoni's home), Nixon had taken a public stand supporting the issue, and hosted a fundraising event in support of Washington Referendum 74.

She endorsed Bill de Blasio in the 2013 New York City mayoral election, who went on to win the Democratic nomination and the general election. Nixon campaigned actively for de Blasio, whom she had worked with since the early 2000s when campaigning against Michael Bloomberg's education policies. De Blasio credited Nixon and union leader George Gresham as the two "architects of (his) campaign" in the Democratic primaries, when he defeated the favorite Christine Quinn. After his election, de Blasio appointed Nixon as his representative to The Public Theater.

In 2015, Nixon appeared in two films which premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival: Stockholm, Pennsylvania and James White. She received critical acclaim for both performances, especially for the latter, which many considered as "Oscar-worthy."

Nixon played the leading role of reclusive American poet Emily Dickinson in the biographical film A Quiet Passion directed and written by Terence Davies. The film premiered in February 2016 at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival. In May 2016, it was announced that Nixon would play Nancy Reagan in the upcoming television film adaptation of Killing Reagan. Filming began in late May and the film aired in October 2016.

Nixon appeared on Broadway in the revival of The Little Foxes, officially opening on April 19, 2017 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. She alternated the roles of Regina and Birdie with Laura Linney, winning her second Tony Award for her performance as Birdie.

In 2018, it was reported that Nixon was preparing a progressive challenge to the incumbent governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo. On March 19, 2018, she announced via Twitter that she was running for governor.

Nixon was expected to secure the nomination of the Working Families Party of New York during its annual convention in April 2018, thus guaranteeing her a spot on the general election ballot. On April 15, Nixon won 91.5 percent of the vote at the Party's statewide committee meeting after Cuomo withdrew himself from consideration at the last minute. Nixon stated that in the event that she did not also secure the Democratic nomination, she would "confer with the Working Families Party and we will make the decision we think is best".

The endorsement caused a schism in the party, as labor unions, including the Service Employees International Union, and Communications Workers of America, indicated they would not support the party in the election. The withdrawal, it was believed, would significantly hurt the party's finances which, in 2018, were at a level of $1.7 million and supported a statewide staff of about 15 people. The battle received considerable attention since there were concerns that Nixon might drain enough votes from Cuomo in the general election to allow a Republican to be elected (although Cuomo was comfortably leading the polls at the time). Cuomo had vigorously campaigned to get the nomination before withdrawing when it was clear he would not get it.

On May 23, 2018, Nixon and other potential Democratic challengers to Cuomo were eliminated from the Democratic party endorsement at the state Democratic Convention after failing to meet the 25% state delegate threshold needed to appear on the ballot. Nixon filed a petition with 65,000 signatures, more than four times the 15,000 required, to force a primary election. The primary was held on September 13. With 93% of precincts reporting, Cuomo received 65% of votes and Nixon got 35%. On October 5, 2018, the Working Families Party removed Nixon's name from their ticket after agreeing to endorse Cuomo and Hochul, thus ensuring that Nixon would not appear on the general election ballot.

In January 2019, it was announced that Nixon will star in the upcoming Netflix drama series Ratched.

In the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Nixon endorsed Bernie Sanders before campaigning for him in early February 2020 in Las Vegas. She stated, "In the same terrifying and muscular way that Trump is a force for so much of what is bad in this country, in this world, Bernie has that same kind of muscularity of vision but for good. A candidate who is too beholden to big money and the establishment and just basically doesn’t want to rock the boat is never going to be a powerful enough counterbalance to what Donald Trump has to offer. You need someone as vigorous and who is wanting to turn the system upside down."