Sex And The City star Cynthia Nixon has spoken for the first time about coming out as a lesbian.
The actress, who played cynical lawyer Miranda Hobbes in the long-running series (pic bottom left), left the father of her two children for teaching union leader Christine Marinoni two years ago.
Nixon explained to New York magazine: "I never felt like there was an unconscious part of me that woke up or that came out of the closet. There wasn't a struggle, there wasn't an attempt to suppress.
"I met this woman, I fell in love with her, and I'm a public figure. I feel like there was an enormous temperature spike, where I was on the front page of two daily papers. There was paparazzi outside my house. My girlfriend had English press on her parents' lawn. Every person she went to high school with got a phone call. They almost put me on the cover of People magazine.
"And then it died. Because there wasn't really anything to say. I can't remember in what context they tell people this, but if someone is chasing you, stop running. And then they'll stop chasing you."
Nixon's next project is a film called The Babysitters, due out early 2007, about a teenager who turns her babysitting service into a call-girl service for married guys.