Cynthia Nixon

Cynthia Nixon has spent her career moving easily between stage, television and film, bringing a sharp intelligence and emotional directness to characters who rarely fit into a single neat category. Born in Manhattan on April 9, 1966, she began acting as a child and credits her mother, actress Anne Elizabeth Knoll, with introducing her to theatre. Nixon made her feature debut in Little Darlings and her Broadway debut in a 1980 revival of The Philadelphia Story. While attending Barnard College, she continued working to pay her way through school and earned a B.A. That ability to balance different corners of the acting world became a defining part of her career. In 1984, she appeared simultaneously in the Broadway productions of The Real Thing and Hurlyburly, running between two nearby theatres because both roles were brief. Her early screen work included Amadeus, The Manhattan Project and Robert Altman’s Tanner ’88, while her stage career took her through productions including The Heidi Chronicles, Angels in America and Indiscretions. For television audiences, Nixon is most closely associated with Miranda Hobbes, the pragmatic lawyer she played throughout Sex and the City. The role earned her three Emmy nominations and a win in 2004, and she later returned as Miranda in the feature films and the revival series And Just Like That…, where she also serves as an executive producer. Her television work has also included an Emmy-nominated performance as Eleanor Roosevelt in Warm Springs, an Emmy-winning guest role on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Ratched and a leading role as Ada Brook in The Gilded Age. Nixon’s stage work has remained just as substantial. She won a Tony Award for Rabbit Hole, earned another nomination for Wit and received a second Tony for playing Birdie in The Little Foxes. On film, she has taken on demanding roles in James White and A Quiet Passion, playing poet Emily Dickinson in the latter. It is a career shaped less by one medium than by a sustained willingness to move among them, from Broadway drama and independent film to major television series. Her work also extends beyond acting into politics, adding another dimension to a public life rooted in New York.