Actress and LGBT rights activist Cynthia Nixon gave a terrific interview to theNew York Times, entitled “Life After Sex,” in which she discusses her role in the Broadway revival of Wit, her pre and post Sex and the City fame and how “gay is better.”
Nixon, 45, a long-time darling of screen and stage is best known for her six-season stint as the –oft voice of reason -- Miranda on HBO’s mega-hit Sex and the City. And while the actress may be best known for her escapades with Carrie, Samantha and Charlotte, she’s also a Tony winner for Rabbit Hole in 2006.
Now, Nixon -- who had breast cancer in 2006 and whose mother has had it three times--returns to the stage in Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Prize winning play Wit as Vivian Bearing, a salty professor of 17th century poetry battling stage IV ovarian cancer.
Regarding her own experience with cancer Nixon told the NYT, “I feel that between my experience and my mother’s, breast cancer is a little bit like someone who lives next door. “I know what that person looks like and what their daily habits are. I mean, I get my ultrasounds and stuff, so I think I’m less scared than if I didn’t do that.”
Nixon’s partner Christine Marinoni, 44, also does her part contributing to Nixon’s overall health. Grabbing potatoes, red kale and apples from an organic mart during the interview Nixon told the NYT, “My girlfriend juices for me, which is really nice. It’s a cancer thing.”
Speaking or Nixon’s girlfriend, she and Marinoni began dating in 2004, a year after Nixon separated from Daniel Mozes, the father of her two older children. Marinoni and Nixon have a baby boy together whom Marinoni carried.
On the subject of facing scrutiny from some gay activists for coming out later in life Nixon has some strong feelings.
“I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ‘I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice,” Nixon told the NYT. “And for me, it is a choice.”
Nixon went on to explain that she understand the reasons behind eschewing being gay as any sort of choice but that no one can “define her gayness for her.”
“I say it doesn’t matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not,” Nixon said.
Read the full interview here.
Image via Getty.
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