Sunday, May 11, 2014

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

8 comments:

  1. I love Cynthia Nixon, great actress and great role model.

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  2. Seaweed are you ready for Game 6?

    Go Bruins!

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  3. "I've Got the World On A String" by Bobby Caldwell has been high on my playlist lately since I first heard it on Pandora and just can't get enough of it. And I mentioned it on here, too the other day.

    I was listening to the song at lunch time today and so I felt like tweeting about what a great song it is. And Bobby Caldwell himself favorited my tweet!!!!

    That is so AWESOME!!! WOW. So cool.

    This ranks right up there when Werner Von Braun replied to a tweet I had made when I told him I really liked his name, always thought it was a cool name. And he liked my twitter name, too. lol

    Soooo fun. Bobby Caldwell. Cool.

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  4. A Man Claims the Zodiac Killer Is His Father in a New Book That's Been Kept Secret for Months
    By Elon Green


    Dozens of HarperCollins staff — sales, marketing, publicity, and legal — have, for months, kept a book almost entirely under the radar. The Most Dangerous Animal of All, by Gary L. Stewart (Amazon rank, as of 1:30 p.m. Monday: #140,113), has no cover art. Its subject matter has been kept out of the press. But the book, which will be published tomorrow, does have an intriguing plot summary that reads, in part:

    An explosive and historic book of true crime and an emotionally powerful and revelatory memoir of a man whose ten-year search for his biological father leads to a chilling discovery: His father is one of the most notorious-and still at large-serial killers in America.

    Not mentioned in the summary: Stewart, a vice-president at Delta Tech Service in Baton Rouge, alleges that his father was the Zodiac Killer, who is believed to have killed at least five people in Northern California, and famously sent letters and cryptograms to Bay Area newspapers.

    He reached this conclusion after twelve years of research, Tina Andreadis, a publicist at HarperCollins, told me this afternoon.

    Approximately fifteen months ago, B.G. Dilworth Agency brought a proposal to HarperCollins’s Michael Signorelli (an editor who has since left for Henry Holt). It was acquired within a week or two, for an amount HarperCollins declined to disclose. “It was a standard acquisition process,” another publicist told me, “except for the NDA.” Stewart was paired with writer Susan Mustafa, a veteran of the true crime genre.

    The book — 367 pages, including the index — was vetted by HarperCollins lawyers, including Fabio Bertoni, who is now general counsel at The New Yorker. “Our lawyers felt it was legally sound,” said Andreadis.

    I asked if HarperCollins had contact with the San Francisco Police Department, for verification purposes. No, and apparently for good reason. According to the book, Andreadis said, the San Francisco Police Department “knew more than they’re willing to admit.”

    She didn’t share many details of the book, but told me that Stewart’s father had a criminal record in San Francisco (“forgeries, bad checks”), and there was a strong resemblance between his father’s mug shot and the police sketch.

    Apparently, the police sketch was a good one. Said Andreadis: “If you look at Gary’s photo next to the sketch of the Zodiac next to his father’s mug shot, you can see that there is very clearly more than just a passing resemblance. They look alike.”

    “He didn’t want to believe,” she said. “I don’t think most people want to know that their father is a notorious serial killer.”

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  5. Special, I only saw a bit of the game on Saturday from Boston and it looked terrible for the Habs. Have family visiting and a meeting this evening so didn't get to see much till the 3rd period tonight. Nothing like a full 7 game series, so Wednesday night should provide plenty of excitement for all fans. Can't count any team out of it, so best of luck for your Bruins, but watch out for those crazy Canadiens!

    Cheers...

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  6. They've given us one heck of a series! :)

    See you Wednesday Seaweed.

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