YOU can hardly tell from the way she works the room in her Oscar de la Renta outfit, or the velocity she clocks in her staggeringly tall Christian Louboutin heels, but Cynthia Nixon is no fashionista.

'It seemed like a peak from which I can look back and also forward' Nixon on turning 40

'Fashion is just not my thing,' says Nixon, who plays lawyer Miranda Hobbes. 'It's just not where my head is. It's the last thing I think about.'

In the four years since the SATC TV series wrapped, she has had other things on her mind: She won a Tony award for Best Actress in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Rabbit Hole. She was also diagnosed with breast cancer. And she came out as a lesbian.

Yet the big deal, she says, was turning 40. 'I had a party, which I don't usually have, and invited like 80 people,' says the accomplished stage actress, now 42. 'It seemed like a peak from which I can look back and also forward. It felt like a big deal for me.'

Not that finding a lump in her breast was a mere trifle. But having a mother twice diagnosed with breast cancer, and who battled and survived, helped put it in perspective.

'My mother was always very calm about it, and so I saw it as just a blip in my life,' she says. Today, Nixon is an ambassador for the Susan G. Komen cancer advocacy group.

Like Miranda, she comes across as poised and cerebral.

Of the four women, she was asked the most private questions, and fielding them in a room of strangers cannot possibly be easy. Yet she gave the most thoughtful, unflinching answers, with no trace of resentment or defensiveness.

What's it like coming out as a lesbian, someone barked. 'I don't say I'm gay,' she answers. 'I just say I'm in love with a woman.'

She talks bashfully about Christine Marinoni, the education specialist who has been her partner for four years, and what she cherishes about their life together. 'I hope to be with her for the rest of my life.'

What does she admire about the character she plays? Miranda finds herself in circumstances she did not expect - being a mother, living in Brooklyn - but she gamely makes the most of it, Nixon says.

But unlike Miranda, 'I am not nearly so confrontational,' she says, with a laugh. 'In fact, I'm very good at letting people off the hook.'

The above article was published in The Straits Times on May 28, 2008.