A few months ago, the actress Sarah Paulson is at a restaurant in Los Angeles, looking forward to a woman she had never met. She had invested days obsessing over her supper date, also putting on the fragrance that is same.

“I remember her coming through the revolving home, and there was clearly this dappled light coming through the windows, and so I couldn’t quite see her face,” Ms. Paulson stated. “But I experienced examined her physical mannerisms a great deal that i possibly could inform by her stroll and her arms, just how she ended up being pushing. Then, needless to say, the thing i really could see had been that mole, illuminated and kissed by the sunlight.”

In wandered Marcia Clark.

They consumed, ordered tequila and chatted for such a long time that they shut the destination down.

“The entire thing had this date quality,” Ms. Paulson stated, still sounding giddy, as she recalled the rendezvous over meal in the Four Seasons Hotel in ny. She felt “an amazing feeling of kinship” because of the prosecutor, who she plays into the FX series “The People v. O. J. Simpson: United states Crime tale.”

The 10-episode show has came back the Simpson test towards the social foreground 2 full decades on, and has now assisted redeem the image of Ms. Clark, a public punching case during the time. As played by Ms. Paulson, she is recast as a chain-smoking feminist underdog, hounded by the news headlines news unfairly fixated on the observed shrewishness and (questionable) perm.

“That’s the initial thing individuals state if they hear ‘Marcia Clark,’” Ms. Paulson stated. “They don’t also think ‘lawyer.’ They simply think ‘hair.’” Next week’s episode, “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia,” covers Ms. Clark’s midtrial makeover, which just brought her more critique.

As an actress, Ms. Paulson could relate genuinely to the scrutiny. “Every time which you get anywhere regarding the red carpet, presently there are sites focused on selecting you apart, like Tom and Lorenzo or whoever those dudes are,” she stated. “And they truly are therefore mean.”

Although not sometime ago, she experienced one thing brand new: becoming the main topic of a tabloid that is hot, maybe perhaps not away from mockery but out of extensive pleasure. In news got out that Ms. Paulson, who was about to turn 41, was dating the actress Holland Taylor, who is 32 years her senior december.

The online effect had been instant and (rare for a high profile relationship story) almost totally good, just as if pop music tradition had been wanting a few that therefore totally broke the mildew. An average headline, from BuzzFeed: “Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor Are Dating and It’s Everything.”

Ms. Paulson, on her behalf part, discovered the unexpected attention “surreal.” She has attempted to keep her distance through the hubbub but acknowledged, “My alternatives in romantic lovers haven’t been traditional, and then the concept it compelling. it is ‘other’ makes”

Before dating Ms. Taylor, she was at a seven-year relationship with the actress Cherry Jones, that is 18 years more than she actually is. Before that, she dated males, such as the playwright and actor Tracy Letts, that is nine years older also to who she had been involved.

She never kept her same-sex relationships secret, smooching Ms. Jones on real time tv during the 2005 Tony Awards and, now, appearing hand in hand with Ms. Taylor in the 2016 experts’ Selection Awards and the Broadway opening of “Fiddler on the top.” (individuals Magazine declared it A pda parade that is“adorable.”

But she’s got been cautious with labeling her sexuality, for concern about being “skewered” should she change her relationship practices down the road.

“If my entire life alternatives must be predicated predicated on the thing that was expected of me personally from a residential district on either side, that is likely to make me feel actually straitjacketed, and we don’t want to believe that,” she stated. “What I am able to state definitely is the fact that i will be in love, and therefore individual happens become Holland Taylor.”

The ladies first came across at a supper party about about ten years ago, whenever Ms. Paulson ended up being nevertheless with Ms. Jones. However, she thought that Ms. Taylor had been “probably the essential woman that is exquisitely beautiful ever seen.”

They crossed paths once again a couple of years later on, once the actress Martha Plimpton asked both to record videos on her behalf reproductive-rights company, an Is For. Ms. Paulson had been shooting “American Horror tale: Asylum” during the time, and Ms. Taylor ended up being taking care of her one-woman play, “Ann,” concerning the previous Texas governor Ann Richards.

After that, they accompanied one another on Twitter and exchanged messages that are direct finally determining to head out for supper. They will have now been together for a tad bit more than per year.

Ms. Paulson stated she had never really dated anybody her own age. “There’s a poignancy to being with somebody older,” she observed. “I think there’s a higher appreciation of the time and everything you have actually together and what’s crucial, and it will result in the things that are little really small. It places a type or sort of razor- razor- sharp light blended with sort of diffused light on one thing. We can’t say it any kind of means than there’s a poignancy to it, and a sense that is heightened of in addition to value of the time.”

She’s got constantly gravitated toward her elders, she included, beginning in junior senior high school. “I’d a home that is complicated, and my teachers, predominantly my movie movie theater instructors and my English teachers, had been really aimed at caring for me personally in a certain method,” she said. “And in doing this, i do believe I developed a tremendously rapport that is easy individuals avove the age of myself.”

Ms. Paulson was created in Tampa, Fla., in 1974. Whenever she had been 5, her mom, an aspiring journalist, moved her along with her more youthful sibling to ny, leaving their daddy, an professional at a door-manufacturing business, in Florida. They got an apartment that is small Queens and slept for a mattress on the ground. Ms. Paulson’s mom worked being a waitress at Sardi’s while using writing classes regarding the part.

Because of the time Ms. Paulson was at 7th grade, the household had relocated to Park Slope, Brooklyn, and she had found the phase during the personal college Berkeley Carroll. An instructor here informed her about a senior high school where mail order wife she could learn performing, and she enrolled during the Fiorello H. LaGuardia twelfth grade of musical & Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan.

She booked her first professional job that is acting after graduation, understudying for Amy Ryan in Wendy Wasserstein’s “The Sisters Rosensweig” on Broadway. “I started the entranceway and I also stated, ‘Mom we got the component!’” she recalled. “And her response that is first was ‘Oh, no, you’re actually planning to try this?’”