Who Is Cynthia Nixon? Wiki, Actress, Net Worth, 'Sex And The City' & Facts To Know

Cynthia grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and in Yorkville, where she was raised by her single mother in a one bedroom, fifth-floor walk-up apartment. She is a proud graduate of New York public schools and an even prouder public school parent. Her three children, Sam, Charlie and Max, are all New York City public school students or graduates.

Cynthia Nixon’s net worth is valued to be around $60 million, and that comes off her long-running role as Miranda Hobbes on the HBO hit series Sex and the City, as well as the Sex and the City movie, and its followed sequel, Sex and the City 2. Her net worth may increase if she’s successful in her run for Governor of New York. Nixon made her acting debut in 1980’s “Little Darlings.” In “Little Darlings,” Nixon played a supporting role of Sunshine.

In the film, fifteen-year-old Ferris Whitney and Angel Bright (played by Tatum O’ Neal and Kristy McNichol) meet when they attend the same summer camp and are assigned the bunks next to each other in the same cabin. It's hate at first because they seem to be polar opposites, but the plot focuses on their one similarity, they are both virgins, the only ones of their age in the cabin. Ferris, who initially seems more interested in the pursuit of the opposite sex, quickly sets her sights on Gary Callahan, the much older coach at the camp. But Angel finds her own target, namely Randy Adams, an equally streetwise boy attending the camp across the lake. The process becomes a bonding exercise for the two. It basically your typical 80s sexist film.

Cynthia began working as an actress when she was 12 years old to earn money to pay for her college education and has been a proud union member ever since. She continued to act in a variety of film, stage, and TV roles to put herself through Barnard College at Columbia University, and went on to an Emmy, Tony, and Grammy award-winning career.

Perhaps best known for her role as Miranda Hobbes on HBO’s hit series, “Sex and the City,” Cynthia received her Grammy for her role in the audio version of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the seminal book warning about the dangers of climate change.

For the last 17 years, Cynthia has been fighting for better schools and more equitable education funding all across the state, including as a spokesperson and organizer for the Alliance for Quality Education, which helped to reverse hundreds of million in education budget cuts.

Cynthia has traveled the state, met with legislators, and spoken out in Albany on numerous occasions to demand that public schools in every district get the resources they need, regardless of income level. For her work promoting educational and racial justice in New York State, she was honored at the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network’s Triumph Awards.

Nixon has received multiple Emmy nominations for her role in Sex in the City in 2002, 2003 and 2004 but she did not win the award until the final season of Sex in the City in 2004. Post-Sex and the City, Nixon made a guest appearance on ER in 2005, as a mother who undergoes a tricky procedure to lessen the effects of a debilitating stroke.

She followed up with a turn as Eleanor Roosevelt for HBO's Warm Springs in 2005, which chronicled Franklin Delano Roosevelt's quest for a miracle cure for his polio. Nixon earned an Emmy nomination as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for her performance.

In 2006, she appeared in David Lindsay-Abaire's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Rabbit Hole in a Manhattan Theatre Club production, and won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Also in 2008, she won an Emmy for her guest appearance in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, portraying a woman pretending to have dissociative identity disorder. In 2010 she reprised her role of Miranda Hobbes in Sex in the City 2. Cynthia Nixon is proud of her work on Sex and the City 2, but there was one scene in the movie’s sequel that left a bad taste in her mouth.

In Nixon’s appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, the 51-year-old actress recalls how she reacted when the audience clapped at the 2010 film’s London premiere when Mr. Big (Chris Noth) surprised Carrie Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, with a massive closet that he built for her. “I was a little devastated,” admits Nixon, “It seemed to me that the show was so much about female empowerment and about women making their own choices and women standing up for what they wanted and supporting themselves.

So, to me, to have this [scene] be a climax of the film, that your very wealthy husband built you a really nice closet for your clothes, I thought, ‘Wow, that’s not really what you love about the show, is it?’ ‘Cause that’s not what we were making it for.” Still, she adds with a laugh, “We love the clothes! I’m not saying we don’t love the clothes.”

Nixon has always been interested in portraying people who resist performing. She is at her best when she plays women who exert a pull on their audience without wanting to look so crass or present yourself in a certain way. That’s what drew her to her 2017 role of Emily Dickinson in Terence Davies’s bio-pic “A Quiet Passion.” Nixon plays Emily Dickson who is quick to laugh and to dazzle others with her wit, but who often turns away would-be suitors and friends.

Many scholars have said that Dickinson was more social and less opaque than the hermetic mythology that surrounds her suggests. Nixon’s Dickinson in “A Quiet Passion,” is a bitter and distant as she is desperate for connection. The New Yorker’s Richard Brody wrote of Nixon that “her incarnation of Dickinson seems to rise outward from the bone; she seems frozenly poised with, yes, a quiet passion that’s all the more impassioned for its unplanned quietness.” A Quiet Passion opened to rave reviews across the United States.

In 2015 Nixon stared in Josh Mond’s “James White.” James White, played by Christopher Abbott, is a troubled twenty-something trying to stay afloat in a frenzied New York City. He retreats further into a self-destructive, hedonistic lifestyle, but as his mother, who is played by Nixon, battles a serious illness James is forced to take control of his life. As the pressure on him mounts, James must find new reserves of strength or risk imploding completely.

Nixon is a big user of Instagram, who has over 446,000 followers on her Instagram page. Her current pics and posts focus on her political campaign to run for governor. She has used her Instagram pics to promote her political agendas, including legalizing marijuana, gay rights, and equal pay for women.