Out Spotlight

Today's Out Spotlight is an Emmy, Grammy and Tony Award-winning actress who is a wife, mother, cancer survivor and activist. Today's Out Spotlight is Cynthia Nixon.

Cynthia Nixon was born on April 9, 1966, in New York City the daughter of Anne Knoll, an actress from Chicago, Illinois, and Walter E. Nixon, a radio journalist from Texas..

A versatile performer, she began her career on the New York stage as a teenager. Her on screen debut was as an imposter on the television show "To Tell the Truth" She made her Broadway debut in The Philadelphia Story in 1980. That same year, Nixon appeared as a hippie child in the film Little Darlings with Tatum O’Neal.

Over the next few years, she played a variety of roles on stage, television, and film. She appeared in a few television after school specials as well as juggled roles in two Broadway plays -- Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing and David Rabe's Hurlyburly -- at the same time in 1984 and 1985. She also made time to film a small role in Amadeus at the same time.

In the 1990s, Nixon kept up her hectic work schedule. She made television and film appearances and performed in several productions, scoring her first Tony Award nomination in 1995 for her work in Indiscretions.

In 1997, Nixon auditioned for what would prove to be the biggest project of her career so far. She won the role of Miranda Hobbes in a new HBO comedy series Sex and the City based on a newspaper column by Candace Bushnell. Sarah Jessica Parker played the columnist - named Carrie Bradshaw in the show. The show followed the lives and romantic misadventures of Bradshaw, Hobbes, art dealer Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) and public relations expert and man-eater Samantha Jones (Kim Catrall).

Filled with sharp dialogue, genuine characters and interesting fashions, Sex and the City became a huge hit. Nixon played Miranda as a smart, sarcastic and successful woman, who was also fearful, defensive and mildly neurotic at times, adding a layer of vulnerability to the character. During the course of the series, her character goes through a transformation, softened somewhat by her experiences as a mother and later a wife. Nixon won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her performance in 2004.

After Sex and the City, she took on projects that showed her great acting range. In 2005, she appeared as Eleanor Roosevelt in the HBO film Warm Springs opposite Kenneth Branagh as Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Critics praised Nixon's interpretation of the legendary first lady and humanitarian.

In 2006, she won her first Tony Award for her performance as a grief-stricken mother in the play Rabbit Hole.

On April 15, 2008, she disclosed that she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006, but decided to keep her treatment secret. "I didn't really want to make it public while I was going through it," she said on Good Morning America. "I didn't want paparazzi at the hospital, that kind of thing."

Nixon, who reprised her role as Miranda in a movie version of HBO's Sex and the City in 2008, was diagnosed while she was starring in the off-Broadway play The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She scheduled her surgery on a Sunday to avoid missing a performance and then underwent six and a half weeks of radiation.

Nixon had firsthand experience with cancer as a child. Her mother, Ann, battled the disease twice. "As the daughter of a breast cancer survivor, knowing my personal risk made me more aware and more empowered when I faced my own diagnosis."

After her disclosure she 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.

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 2010 she returned to the big screen along with the rest of the cast for Sex and the City 2.

From 1988 to 2003, Nixon was in a relationship with schoolteacher Danny Mozes.They have two children together, a daughter born in 1996 and a son born in 2002.

In 2004, she began dating education activist Christine Marinoni. Nixon and Marinoni became engaged in April 2009. Marinoni gave birth to a son in 2011. The couple were married in New York City on May 27, 2012. In 2012, Nixon identified herself as bisexual. She has taken a public stand supporting marriage equality in Marinoni's home state of Washington, hosting a fund-raising event in support of Washington Referendum 74.

"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."

Happy Mother's Day