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To many, Cynthia Nixon may best be known as Sex and the City’s hard-charging lawyer Miranda Hobbs. But the actor has had a long and distinguished career that includes film, television, and stage performances. She’s also long been civically engaged, even once mounting a run for governor of New York. Cynthia Nixon and her wife share this passion, having even worked on an education initiative together.

More than just Miranda

Though Miranda Hobbs is arguably Nixon’s most well-known and beloved role, her professional acting career began well before the show was conceived.

Her first screen appearance was on the game show To Tell the Truth as a child. And her first performance was in a 1979 after school special when she was just 12 years old, per Advocate. She had a series of Broadway, TV, and film appearances throughout her teens and college years, leading up to her supporting role in 1986’s The Manhattan Project, her biggest role to that point. 

In the ’90s, she continued alternating between the stage and screen and appeared on shows like Law & Order and Murder She Wrote, as well as films like Addams Family Values and The Out-of-Towners.

But her profile skyrocketed with her role on Sex and the City, beginning in 1998. The series not only led to two sequel movies and a sequel series, but also landed Nixon her first Emmy.

Post-Sex and the City, Nixon has continued to land roles in high-profile films, movies, and plays. For her 2005 turn as Eleanor Roosevelt in the HBO film Warm Springs, she won another Emmy. Also that year, she won a Tony Award for Best Actress for the play Rabbit Hole.

Throughout the 2010s, her critically lauded performances continued. She earned a second Tony in 2017 for the Broadway play The Little Foxes.

More than an actress

But despite Nixon’s very busy acting schedule, acting isn’t her only passion. She’s long been an advocate for public education and women’s health.

Unlike some celebrities who keep their politics private, Nixon has been a vocal supporter of multiple candidates for office, including former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. In fact, her endorsement of the former landed her an appointment as his representative to the New York City-based arts organization, The Public Theater.

Her political involvement even inspired her to run for governor of New York in 2018, a race that drew national attention. She was up against incumbent Andrew Cuomo for the Democratic Party’s endorsement after securing the endorsement of the powerful Working Families Party (WFP) in the primary.

Cuomo landed the Democratic Party endorsement and beat Nixon in the primary election, after which Nixon lost the WFP endorsement for the general election. As a result, she did not appear on the general election ballot.

Her defeat did not extinguish her passion for politics. She campaigned for Senator Sanders for president in the 2020 election in the primary and Joe Biden in the general. She has also continued to advocate for the causes she cares about.

How did Cynthia Nixon meet her wife?

Cynthia Nixon with her arms around wife Christine Marinoni
Christine Marinoni and wife Cynthia Nixon | Bruce Glikas/Contributor
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Cynthia Nixon’s passion for these issues also led her to meet her wife, Christine Marinoni, an education advocate. According to Hollywood Life, they met in 2001 during a fundraiser for the Alliance for Quality Education, a coalition designed to improve the quality of and access to public education and to ensure a level playing field for children from historically disadvantaged groups.

The coalition was working to reduce New York City class sizes at the time. And while they worked together from 2001 to 2003, Nixon was still with long-time partner Danny Mozes with whom she had two children.

In 2004, a year after Nixon and Mozes split, Nixon and Marinoni began seeing each other. And after getting engaged in 2009, the two married in 2012 and have lived together in Manhattan ever since.

Nixon’s children with Mozes are grown, but Nixon and Marinoni share a son they had together, as the latter gave birth to a son in 2011. None of that has slowed Nixon down, though, as she continues to advocate and act just as frequently as before.

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