Sex And The City star Cynthia Nixon plans to marry
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By John Hiscock 12/05/2008


Despite being the flaming redhead, Miranda's love-life was never as red-hot or risque as that of her Sex And The City pals.

The single working mum was sassy but sensible, cool and collected - set against Samantha's sexy shenanigans, Carrie's eyebrow-raising escapades and Charlotte's madcap marriages.

But away from the camera, it's been a very different story for Cynthia Nixon, who played her.

In real life she has provoked more shock and evoked more sympathy than any of the Manolo-clad, Manhattan-swilling fictional friends.
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In the past four years, Cynthia has battled breast cancer, and caused a sensation after dumping the father of her two children for a lesbian lover - who she now plans to marry.

If she fears the furore surrounding tonight's glitzy London premiere of the Sex And The City movie will catapult her turbulent private life back into the spotlight, there is no sign of it when we meet.

Talking exclusively to the Mirror, Cynthia, 42, is relaxed and chatty.

Far from shying away from any talk of her activist girlfriend, Christine Marinoni, their relationship is the first thing she mentions.

It seems their plans for a civil ceremony are on hold until the New York authorities recognise same-sex marriages.

"If it becomes legal I think we would," says Cynthia, who still lives in the Upper West Side neighbourhood where she was born. "It's something my girlfriend is interested in and it was not something my boyfriend ever was.

"I think that to get married to her would be a little act of rebellion. It's like if you've never had the vote and then you get it you're going to run out there and vote.

"I always avoided marriage in the past and was always very wary of it. I felt like it was potentially a trap. People sometimes want the party, the gifts and the public celebration of this big love - they're excited about that rather than about the lifetime commitment. So I always steered clear of it." Emmy-award winning Cynthia shocked everyone when she walked out on her partner of 15 years - English professor Danny Mozes - for Christine.

She kept a low profile and refused to publicly discuss her new romance until the fuss had died down.

She says: "I started dating my girlfriend in January 2004 and the press got wind of it around the September.

"There was a lot of attention and it was crazy. I said I was romantically involved with a woman, but I wasn't going to talk about it until everybody calmed down.

"I never felt like there was an unconscious part of me that woke up or came out of the closet. There wasn't a struggle or an attempt to suppress. I met this woman and I fell in love with her.

"In terms of my sexual orientation, I don't really feel that I changed. I don't feel any different than I did before. I don't feel like there was some hidden part of myself that I wasn't aware of.

"I had been with men all my life and I had never met a woman I had fallen in love with before. But when I did, it didn't seem so strange. "I don't define myself. I'm just a woman in love with another woman."

Her children - Samantha, 11, and five-year-old Charles - appear to have taken it in their stride. Cynthia says they call both her and Christine "Mom."

It was Christine who supported her through her tough breast cancer ordeal two years ago. Cynthia is now an ambassador for Susan G Komen for the Cure, the world's largest breast cancer organisation. To coincide with Mother's Day in the States, yesterday, she fronted a series of adverts urging women to have regular mammograms.

"I'm a logical person to do it because I have a very good story to tell," she says. "If you catch it when it's in the breast and has not moved outside, your chances of surviving are 98 per cent.

"So the only thing you really have to be afraid of as a woman is if you don't get your regular mammograms."

It was a routine screening that detected cancer in her right breast. She says: "It wasn't a happy thing to learn but my mother, who is alive and well, has had breast cancer twice - the first time 30 years ago.

"I admire the way she's always dealt with it. Far from hearing it as a death sentence, she heard it as a health problem that if you treat the chances are very good that it will go away.

"So that's how I feel about it, too." Given her family history, Cynthia has had regular mammograms since the age of 35, so the disease was detected early. And following a lumpectomy and six weeks of radiation, she was declared in remission.

It meant she was fighting fit again when it came to shooting the SATC movie.

Cynthia was playing the lead in a stage version of The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie when she heard that the film - which reunites her with Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall and Kristin Davis - was finally going ahead, after lots of false starts.

"When the TV series ended I missed Miranda and all the other women - both the real and the fictional," she says.

"We really thought there'd be a film - there was a lot of expectation about it. So when it didn't happen I thought it was all over for good. I never imagined that four years would pass before we'd find ourselves doing it."

The film finds Miranda living a less-than-perfect married life in Brooklyn with Steve and their son Brady.

"She's exhausted," explains Cynthia. "Like a working mother she's extended in five different directions.

"When the series started Miranda was so cynical and untrusting and bitter that, although she was great fun to play, I had nothing in common with her.

"But as she's evolved and we see her fears and vulnerabilities, I feel that I've grown closer to her. And because of Sex And The City I've got a lot of wonderful clothes. I've learned a lot from the show - I never wore high heels before!" Even so, she is looking forward to kicking off her Manolos and putting her feet up for a short break before getting back to work.

She will star in Distracted in the theatre this summer and also has two movies awaiting release - Lymelife and The Babysitters. But Cynthia knows it will always be Miranda that she is remembered for. She says: "The show helped change the idea of single women in their 30s and 40s from a tearful, lonely spinster waiting by the telephone to a woman who was in charge of her own economic and sexual destiny.

"One who was not afraid to buy herself an apartment, or have a child on her own, or spend a ludicrous amount of money on a handbag. I will always remember being part of something wonderful."

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