When
openly gay actress Cherry
Jones won a Tony
award for Best Actress in a Play at the 59th Annual
Tony Awards, which was broadcast by CBS and watched by over
6 million viewers on Sunday, June 5, she received an excited
kiss on the lips from her girlfriend Sarah Paulson, with
whom she had been holding hands throughout the ceremony.

Moments
later, in her acceptance speech on stage, Jones said "Laura
Wingfield, I share this with you," referring to Paulson
by the name of the character she currently plays in the
Broadway revival of The Glass Menagerie.

And
just like that, the relationship that had been an open secret
in theater circles for awhile suddenly became public.

If
Sarah Paulson looks familiar, it's probably
because you've seen her in a few high-profile movies or
memorable TV roles. But most of her performances have been
on the stage.

Born
in Tampa, Florida in 1975, Paulson then moved with her family
to Manhattan, where she made her professional debut at the
age of 12 in an off-Broadway production of Amerlia Agai.
She continued to do theater while she attended LaGuardia
High School for the Performing Arts and the American Academy
of Dramatic Arts.

She
made her Broadway debut in the production of Wendy Wasserstein's
Tony Award-winning play The Sisters Rosensweig
in 1993, and has also starred in the off-Broadway production
of Talking Pictures, and regional productions of
several plays, including Stalin's Daughter, Ashes,
Ashes, Does Anyone Hear Me?, The Penitent
Madeline, Best Friends, and An Evening
of One Acts.

Paulson
received rave reviews for her 1998 performance in Killer
Joe, an off-Broadway production featuring Scott Glenn
and Amanda Plummer, and she has received mostly positive
reviews for her current role in The Glass Menagerie,
which co-stars Jessica Lange and Christian Slater and runs
through July 2005.

In
1994, Paulson made her television debut in an episode
of Law and Order, and landed her first leading
role on TV in the 1995 CBS supernatural drama American
Gothic, playing a dead woman who communicates with
her living brother. While the series only last a season,
it developed a loyal cult following, as did the WB's
Jack and Jill (1999), in which Paulson played a supporting
role.

She
landed another leading role in the 2002 NBC comedy Leap
of Faith, about a group of 30-something friends, but
the series was canceled after only a handful of episodes
had aired.

Paulson
made her big-screen debut in 1997's Levitation,
starring as a pregnant teenager searching for her birth
mother. She played Diane Keaton's lesbian daughter in The
Other Sister (1999), and was cast in supporting roles
in Held Up (1999), the Mel Gibson-Helen Hunt comedy
What Women Want (2000), and the comedy Bug
(2002). Then in 2003, she delivered a memorable and well-reviewed
performance as the best friend of Renee Zellweger's character
in Down With Love, a spoof of popular 1950s sex
comedies co-starring Ewan McGregor and David Hyde Pierce.

Although
Paulson continues to focus her career efforts on theater,
she hasn't left film and television behind. She can currently
be seen on TV in a supporting role in the second season
of HBO's critically acclaimed western series Deadwood,
and Paulson and Jones recently co-starred in the indie film
Swimmers, which screened at the 2005 Sundance Film
Festival in January and is currently making the festival
rounds.

48-year old Jones became the first--and still only--openly
lesbian Tony Award winner when she thanked her then-partner
in her Best Actress win acceptance speech in 1995 (for her
title role in The Heiress). Jones and her long-time
partner broke up a few years later.

Paulson
and Jones have made no secret of their relationship since
they began dating, regularly attending events and parties
together, but they have not discussed their relationship
in the press so far. Their low-key but open display of affection
during the Tonys indicates a small but significant change
in the degree to which they are willing to be out as a couple.

It
hasn't gone unnoticed. In their morning-after coverage of
the 2005 Tony Awards, veteran guide to New York Theater
Playbill noted that "Cherry Jones, when taking
her Best Actress (Play) award for Doubt referenced
her 'Laura Wingfield' from the stage. Her partner is Sarah
Paulson, of Broadway's The Glass Menagerie."
Broadway.com noted in their post-Awards write-up, under
the subheading "One Giant Step for Gay Rights,"
that "Cherry Jones, who made a similar splash back
in 1995 when she won for The Heiress, paused before
going to the podium to present Glass Menagerie
star Sarah Paulson with a big kiss."

And
as Out.com wrote in their gossip blog today, "before
the telecast, Paulson was not officially out of the closet.
She is now!"

Since
Paulson and Jones both have a history of being press-shy,
their moment at the Tonys may be the only kind of coming-out
statement Paulson makes.

But
it's enough.

2006 Update: Sarah
has been cast in a lead role in the NBC drama series
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, slated to air in the
fall. Read about it here.