Sarah Paulson confirms and opens up about Holland Taylor romance

It’s official: Sarah Paulson has confirmed and even elaborated on her romance with veteran actress Holland Taylor.

The “American Crime Story” star, who plays prosecutor Marcia Clark in “The People vs. O.J. Simpson,” opened up about her relationship with Taylor in an interview with the New York Times while discussing her fluid sexuality and previous older partners.

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“My choices in romantic partners have not been conventional, and therefore the idea that it is ‘other’ makes it compelling,” Paulson, 41, told the newspaper.

“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 continued. “What I can say absolutely is that I am in love, and that person happens to be Holland Taylor.”

Rumors of the surprise pairing bubbled up late last year when the 73-year-old Taylor, of “The Practice” and “Two and a Half Men” fame, confirmed that she was, indeed, dating a younger woman, though she declined to name her girlfriend at the time. Gossips weighed in soon after, and the pair eventually stepped out together at the Critics’ Choice Awards in January after being spotted around New York together for months at several plays.

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The women have been together for a little more than a year, and Paulson said that she thought Taylor was “probably the most exquisitely beautiful woman I’d ever seen” when she first met her at a dinner party about 10 years ago. She had been dating “Transparent’s” Cherry Jones at the time, and prior to that she dated men and was engaged to playwright Tracy Letts, noting that she always gravitated toward older partners.

“There’s a poignancy to being with someone older,” Paulson explained. “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.”

After that dinner party, they crossed paths again a few years later, the newspaper reported, when actress Martha Plimpton asked them to participate in videos for A Is For, her reproductive-rights organization. They started following each other on Twitter, sent direct messages, then went out to dinner.

In Taylor’s November interview with WNYC’s “Death, Sex and Money” podcast, she described her current romance as the first truly life-altering relationship she’s had.

“I am understood by the person who loves me before I am understood by myself,” Taylor said. “That is really sort of a stunning experience that has taken me a while to accept it.”

Follow me on Twitter @NardineSaad.