"I am a lesbian, and it was a later-in-life recognition," she said. "I got involved with someone I never expected to get involved with, and it was that kind of awakening. I had a great deal of difficulty connecting with men in relationships."
Meredith Baxter, a star of the 1980's sitcom "Family Ties", said on Wednesday she was a lesbian as media reports and published photos of her and a woman embracing began to surface in public.
Baxter, 62, told NBC's "The Today Show" that she discovered she was gay seven years ago, several years after her divorce from her third husband. She said her five children, who range from ages 25 to 42, supported her when she told them.
Her comments came amid recent online photographs of her walking with her girlfriend of four years, building contractor Nancy Locke, and reports that she attended a Caribbean cruise with some 1,200 lesbians, which she confirmed.
Baxter said she decided to speak to the media to set the facts straight. She also said she was once so paranoid the media would expose her secret that she asked Locke, who was openly gay, to park her truck farther away.
"She said, 'No'. I thought, 'All right.' I had to reach a level of comfort. It wasn't fair to push her back into some kind of secrecy, and the nice thing is that we live very 'out' lives in Los Angeles," Baxter said.
Baxter played Elyse Keaton, mother of Michael J. Fox's conservative-minded teenager Michael P. Keaton, from 1982 to 1989. She has had guest and recurring television roles since then and also runs a skincare company.
Biography:
Born - Baxter was born June 21, 1947 in South Pasadena, California, the daughter of actress and situation-comedy creator Whitney Blake and Tom Baxter, a radio announcer. Her stepfather is sitcom writer Allan Manings
Meredith Baxter received extensive training in the arts at the Interlochen Summer Camp in Michigan. Meredith worked as an usher, file clerk and cafeteria checker before getting her first film break in Ben (1971). The 5'7" blonde actress entered the "America's sweetheart" category when she was cast as Bridget Fitzgerald Steinberg, the prettier half of a Catholic-Jewish married couple, in the TV sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie (1972). While the series lasted only a year, her "reel" marriage became a "real" one when, in 1974, she wed her B Loves B co-star David Birney. In addition to yielding a new, hyphenated professional name for Meredith, her union with Birney produced five children before the couple divorced in the early 1990s (she also had two children from a previous marriage). In between stage appearances in such productions as Hamlet, Guys and Dolls and Butterflies are Free, Meredith played Nancy Lawrence Maitland on the TV dramedy Family, winning two Emmy nominations during her four-year (1976-80) stint with this series. In 1982, Meredith agreed to star as flower child-turned-suburban mom Elyse Keaton on the weekly TV comedy Family Ties, having been assured that she would be the star of the series in fact as well as in name. As it happened, Family Ties was dominated throughout its seven-year run by co-star Michael J. Fox. A prolific TV-movie actress, Meredith Baxter-Birney owns the distinction of playing the same real-life character twice, with two entirely different interpretations. When she first played accused murderess Betty Broderick in 1992's A Woman Scorned, Meredith was sympathetic to Broderick's plight, and played the role accordingly; but by the time 1993's Her Final Fury rolled around, Meredith, like everyone else involved in the project, was convinced that Betty Broderick deserved what she got--and played the role in the manner of a Gothic Novel villainess. Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Early life
Baxter is best known for her work on two television shows. She first became popular playing the role of Nancy Lawrence Maitland on the television drama Family from 1976 to 1980. She received two Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Continuing Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, in 1977 and 1978. The second role is ex-flower child Elyse Keaton on the situation comedy Family Ties, which aired from 1982 to 1989. In reality, she is only fourteen years older than Michael J. Fox, who played her son Alex Keaton. In 1981, she starred with Annette O'Toole and Shelley Hack in HBO's Standing Room Only series production of Vanities.
Since Family Ties ended its run, Baxter has been directing and starring in television movies. She starred as a psychopathic kidnapper in the The Kissing Place (1990). She was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Special for her work in A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick Story (1992), in which she plays a divorcée who was convicted of murder in the shooting of her ex-husband and his young wife. She was nominated for, and won, a Daytime Emmy award for her work as a lesbian raising a young son in the CBS after-school special "Other Mothers" (1993).
In 1997, she once again played the mother of a character played by Fox, this time on the situation comedy Spin City. In 2005, she began appearing in television commercials for Garden State Life Insurance Company. In 2006 she temporarily co-hosted the NBC morning television program, Today, with Matt Lauer. In 2007 she made a guest appearance on the ABC drama What About Brian. She also made several 2007 appearances as the dying mother of Detective Lilly Rush on the television series Cold Case.
In recent years, she has created a skin-care line called Meredith Baxter Simple Works,[3] which helps raise funds for her breast cancer research foundation. For her work on the television film My Breast (1994), she received a special award for public awareness from the National Breast Cancer Coalition.
In 2004, she teamed up with former co-star Michael Gross to campaign for John Kerry's candidacy for the Presidency.
In 2009, she is guest starring in season two of the web series We Have To Stop Now.
Personal life
Baxter has been married three times. Her first marriage was to Robert Lewis Bush in 1966; they had two children before divorcing in 1971. She then married actor David Birney, whom she met on the set of the sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie where she played his wife on the series. After the show was canceled, the couple became engaged and were married in 1974. From that date until their divorce in 1989, she was credited as Meredith Baxter Birney, a name still commonly associated with her by the general public as she went by it during her most prominent period of work. They have three children. In 1995 she married actor and screenwriter Michael Blodgett; they divorced in 2000.
Baxter was the guest speaker at the 2008 Southern Commencement for National University in La Jolla, California, and was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the university.
In 2009 the The National Enquirer published a piece, later picked up by celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, that Baxter was seen on a lesbian cruise with a female friend which led to speculation on whether or not she was a lesbian or simply enjoying the cruise as a platonic straight friend. On December 2, 2009, she came out as a lesbian on NBC's Today television program. She lives with her partner, Nancy Locke, a general contractor.
