The actress Sarah Paulson, well-known from American Horror Story and now the hit FX miniseries The People versus O.J. Simpson, in which she plays the tight-curled prosecutor Marcia Clark, made waves late last year when it came out that she, at age 41, was dating actress Holland Taylor, 32 years her senior.
But Paulson — who previously dated the actress Cherry Jones for seven years and, before that, was engaged to the actor and playwright Tracy Letts — doesn’t want to be labeled a lesbian, she tells The New York Times in a long profile by Michael Schulman.
“If my life choices had to be predicated based on what was expected of me from a community on either side, that’s going to make me feel really straitjacketed, and I don’t want to feel that,” she said in the story. “What I can say absolutely is that I am in love, and that person happens to be Holland Taylor.”
The couple met over a decade ago, when Paulson was still with Jones, and followed each other on Twitter before starting to exchange direct messages and eventually meet up for dinner. They’ve now been together for more than a year–and the media has reacted to their relationship with delight. “Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor Are Dating and It’s Everything,” raved Buzzfeed.
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Paulson told the Times she felt drawn to dating older people: “There’s a poignancy to being with someone older,” she said. “I think there’s a greater appreciation of time and what you have together and what’s important, and it can make the little things seem very small.”
It seems as though we’re in The Year of The May-December Lesbian Relationship. We’ve seen them in the Lily Tomlin movie Grandma and on the Amazon TV hit Transparent (between Gaby Hoffmann and, natch, Cherry Jones), and now we’re seeing it in real life between Transparent creator Jill Soloway, who is 50, and poet (plus both Grandma and Transparent muse) Eileen Myles, who is 65. And, of course, between Paulson and Taylor.
And we say bring on more! It sure beats having to look at Donald and Melania.