To much of the world, Cynthia Nixon is best known for playing lawyer Miranda Hobbes on the hit TV show Sex and the City and its record-breaking big screen follow-up in 2008. Lucky New York theatergoers, however, are privy to another aspect of the Emmy-winner’s acting gifts whenever she appears on stage in her hometown of Manhattan.
In 2006, Nixon won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Play) for David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Rabbit Hole and is currently appearing Off-Broadway in Lisa Loomer’s critically acclaimed play, Distracted,* as the mother of a nine-year-old boy who may or may not have Attention Deficit Disorder.
The Facts
At Work: Award-winning actor: stage, films and television.
At Home: In Manhattan: mother of two: daughter, Samantha, 12; son Charlie, 6; partner, Christine Marinoni.
Q. What is your favorite activity with your children?
CN: We like to read aloud and take turns, so that sometimes the kids are doing it and sometimes the adults are.
Q. What is the most important lesson you try to impart to your children?
CN: I teach them to be respectful of other people and not take all the wonderful things in their lives for granted.
Q. Who was your greatest child-raising influence and why?
CN: My greatest child-raising influence was my mother, as I think it is for most people. She always told me how wonderful I was and that “there was no one she’d rather be with.” I want my kids get the same feeling from me.
Q. What is your approach to disciplining your children?
CN: When my kids do something that I don’t think is right, I talk to them about it first and try and understand from them what they were thinking and why they did it. With my younger child I am very clear about what the rules are and what the consequences are if he breaks them.
Q. What was a memorable family outing?
CN: Recently when we had a long weekend off from school (and work) we tromped out to Brooklyn and spent the day with our friends and their daughter and had such fun. We turned it into an all-family sleepover at their apartment and spent the whole next day together, too.
*If you haven’t seen Distracted yet, I highly recommend you try to catch it before it closes on May 17th. Not only does Nixon give a dynamite performance in this funny, fast-paced play, but the subject matter resonates big time with contemporary parents who live in a world of easy-access Internet facts and fiction – not to mention an abundance of Ritalin prescriptions. Distracted is playing at the Laura Pels Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, 111 W. 46th St., 212-719-1300 www.roundabouttheatre.org.
