Cynthia Ellen Nixon (born April 9, 1966) is an American Tony and Emmy Award-winning actress who is best known for her portrayal of lawyer Miranda Hobbes in the popular HBO comedy-drama Sex and the City (1998-2004).The native New Yorker began acting at age 12 as the object of a wealthy schoolmate's crush in The Seven Wishes of a Rich Kid, a 1979 ABC Afterschool Special. She made her feature debut co-staring with Kristy McNichol and Tatum O'Neal in Little Darlings (1980). She made her Broadway debut as the bratty Dinah Lord in a 1980 revival of The Philadelphia Story. Alternating between film, TV and stage she did projects like the 1982 ABC-movie My Body, My Child, the features Prince of the City (1981) and I Am the Cheese (1983) and the 1982 off-Broadway productions of John Guare's Lydie Breeze. In 1985 she appeared alongside Jeff Daniels in Lanford Wilson's Lemon Sky at Second Stage Theatre.
Nixon graduated from Hunter College High School, and made theatrical history while a freshman at Barnard College in 1984, simultaneously appearing in two hit Broadway plays directed by Mike Nichols.She played the daughter of Jeremy Irons and Christine Baranski in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing while portraying a teenage runaway who encounters slimy Hollywood types two blocks away in David Rabe's Hurlyburly. That year's Oscar-winning Best Picture Amadeus, directed by Milos Forman, also featured her in a brief role as Mozart's tearful maid.
