Christine Marinoni: Cynthia Nixon Tells All

"Sex and the City" actress Cynthia Nixon has opened up about her six-year relationship with Christine Marinoni in an interview with The Advocate in which she describes her fiancée as "a short man with boobs."

Nixon, who played lawyer Miranda Hobbs in the iconic HBO series and movie, is the cover girl on The Advocate's summer issue. In a lengthy interview with Matthew Breen, she talks about coming out in the glare of the spotlight, living in a two-mother family and going topless on screen.

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Nixon has two children with her previous partner, photographer Danny Mozes with whom she lived for 16 years. She says the children call her "Mommy" and call Christine, who stays home with them all day, "Ma."

The two women met in 2001, when both were working on a school-issue campaign, and became friends before they started dating. Nixon admits that at first she tried to keep the relationship under wraps.

"If anybody, prior to my meeting and falling in love with Christine, had asked me about what I think about sexuality," she told Breen, "I would have said I think we're all bisexual. But I had that point of view without ever having felt attracted to a woman. I had never met a woman I was attracted to [before Christine]. And maybe if I'd met her when I was 20, I would have fallen in love and only dated women. But maybe if I'd met her at 20, I wouldn't have responded at all. Who knows?"

She said the two hope someday to be married, when gay marriage is legal in New York.

Asked about Marinoni's masculine appearance and her penchant for dressing in men's clothes, Nixon said, "She's basically a short man with boobs," adding "a lot of what I love about her is her butchness."

Nixon's first-ever topless scene in the "Sex and the City" movie (the sequel comes out May 27) followed by just weeks her announcement that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and undergone a lumpectomy and radiation treatment.

"Generally, my thoughts are, if they ask me to do [a nude scene], I'll do one," she said. "I mean, I won't do anything, but I feel like if Michael Patrick wants me to do it, there's a reason he wants me to do it."

She is now a spokesperson for Susan G. Komen for the Cure.