Sarah Paulson

Sarah Paulson (born December 17, 1974, Tampa, Florida, U.S.) is a versatile American actress who is admired for effortlessly disappearing into roles on both stage and screen and for playing difficult, often unlikable characters. She is perhaps best known for her long-running collaboration with writer and director Ryan Murphy on the television anthology series American Horror Story (2011– ) and American Crime Story (2016– ). 

Early life and career

Paulson spent her early childhood in her birthplace of Tampa, Florida, with her younger sister, Liz Paulson, and her parents, Catharine Gordon and Douglas Paulson. When Sarah Paulson was five, her parents divorced, and she and her sister and mother moved to New York City, where Gordon took writing classes and waited tables. Sarah Paulson and her sister would visit their father, a business executive, in Florida in the summers (Paulson also has a half sister, Rachel Paulson).

She discovered a love of theater by acting in middle-school plays and, on the recommendation of a teacher, auditioned for and was accepted to the prestigious Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, where she honed her craft. Paulson found work shortly after high-school graduation, making her professional debut as an understudy in a 1994 production of Wendy Wasserstein’s The Sisters Rosensweig on Broadway. Her television career began with a role in an episode (1994) of Law & Order and in several television movies—Friends at Last (1995) and Shaughnessy (1996)—before she made her feature debut in the indie film Levitation (1997). Paulson had a recurring role as Merlyn Temple, the protagonist’s ghost sister, in the television series American Gothic (1995–98). Although Paulson initially aspired to the superstardom of her idol, Julia Roberts, over time she found a niche as a compelling character actor by playing supporting roles in such films as What Women Want (2000), Down with Love (2003), and The Notorious Bettie Page (2005).

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Projects with Ryan Murphy

Paulson first worked with Murphy in an episode of his show Nip/Tuck in 2004. Years after that one-off, the pair were reintroduced to each other by mutual friend Jessica Lange, who encouraged Murphy to again work with Paulson. She subsequently appeared as the medium Billie Dean Howard in the premiere season (2011) of Murphy’s FX horror anthology American Horror Story (cocreated by Brad Falchuk). Paulson played a wide variety of roles—including a ghost addicted to heroin, the head of a school for witches, and conjoined twins—in eight subsequent seasons of the show, earning her five Emmy Award nominations and two Critics Choice Television Awards. In a 2024 conversation with fellow actor Pedro Pascal in Interview magazine, Paulson explained how working with Murphy pushed her creatively: “He kept asking me to do things that were challenging and operatic, and connected me to a thing I didn’t know I was capable of, which was big swings. I wasn’t aware that I was capable of doing something broad or something brave.”

Paulson attracted even greater notice and acclaim for her roles in American Crime Story, another anthology series produced by Murphy. In The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story (2016), she gave a nuanced, humane performance as Marcia Clark, the lead prosecutor in the double-murder case against the famous former athlete. Paulson won Emmy and Golden Globe awards for the role. In 2020 she starred as the titular nurse Mildred Ratched in Netflix’s horror series Ratched, a reimagining, cocreated by Murphy, of the origins of the wicked character from Ken Kesey’s psychological novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. She then played Linda Tripp, who had secretly recorded Monica Lewinsky divulging details of her affair with U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton and shared them with independent counsel Kenneth Starr, leading to Clinton’s impeachment, in Impeachment: American Crime Story (2021).

Other film and television roles

Apart from her involvement with Murphy’s productions, the hardworking Paulson has also appeared in numerous other television shows and movies. She had a Golden Globe-nominated performance as Christian comedian Harriet Hayes in Aaron Sorkin’s comedy-drama television series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006–07) and starred in the short-lived ABC comedy-drama Cupid (2009). In 2012 Paulson portrayed communications director Nicolle Wallace in Game Change, a drama about Sarah Palin joining John McCain’s presidential campaign during the 2008 election.

Other notable film roles include Mary Epps, the vicious wife of a slave owner, in 12 Years a Slave (2013); Abby Gerhard, the former lover of the title character, in the romantic-drama Carol (2015); and Tony Bradlee, the wife of Ben Bradlee, in the political drama The Post (2017). Paulson also had roles in Ocean’s Eight (2018), Bird Box (2018), Glass (2019), The Goldfinch (2019), and Run (2020). In 2020 Paulson appeared as Alice Macray, a friend and collaborator of activist Phyllis Schlafly, in FX’s limited drama series Mrs. America, about the conservative fight against the Equal Rights Amendment.

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On the stage

Paulson has also continued to appear on the stage throughout her career, including in six Off-Broadway shows between 1994 and 2013. On Broadway, she portrayed Laura in the 2005 revival of Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie opposite Lange and played Lisa Morrison in Donald Margulies’s Collected Stories (2010). In 2023, after a 10-year hiatus, Paulson returned to the New York stage in a revival of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s family drama Appropriate. The New York Times praised her “eye-opening, sinus-clearing performance” as the foul-mouthed, voluble Toni, and in 2024 Paulson earned the Tony Award for best actress in a leading role for the part.

Personal life

Paulson was engaged to playwright Tracy Letts in her 20s. She later dated actress Cherry Jones, and since 2015 Paulson has been in a relationship with actress Holland Taylor.