On the day the New York senate decides that gays don't deserve the right to marry, Meredith Baxter, best known for the 1980s television series Family Ties, has stated in print, television, and radio that "yes, I'm a lesbian."
The 62-year-old Baxter (born in the Los Angeles suburb of South Pasadena on June 21, 1947), who has been married three times and has five children, is currently in a relationship with building contractor Nancy Locke. The couple have been together for four years. Baxter says she began dating women seven years ago. (The IMDb implies that it's the same Nancy Locke that was once married to Wings Hauser; but that is apparently a case of mistaken identity.)
Baxter decided to open up now because supermarket and online tabloids recently got hold of a story about the actress — accompanied by a female friend — taking part in a lesbian cruise. (As reported in the Chicago Sun-Times, openly gay actress Kelly McGillis — of Reuben Reuben, Top Gun, and The Accused fame — had previously been on that lesbian-geared cruise as well.) "I didn't want some tabloid to take the story and make it up," Baxter said during an interview with Matt Lauer for the Today show. "I wanted it to be in my own words."
Among Meredith Baxter's screen credits are a supporting role in Phil Karlson's cult thriller Ben (1972), made popular at least in part thanks to the Jackson Five's rendition of the title song; the (mildly) feminist comedy Stand Up and Be Counted (1972), starring Jacqueline Bisset; Alan J. Pakula's political thriller All the President's Men (1976), with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman; David Miller's melodrama Bittersweet Love (1976), starring Lana Turner; and more recently Lorraine Senna's drama Paradise, Texas (2005), playing opposite Timothy Bottoms.
Also, Baxter is excellent in a supporting part in George Bamber's The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green (right, 2005), as the no-nonsense mother of the gay title character (played by Daniel Letterle).
On television, Baxter has made countless guest appearances in TV series, and has starred in a number of television films, including David Lowell Rich's Little Women (1978), as Meg; John Korty's biopic Winnie (1989), in the title role; and Michael Switzer's sports drama Miracle on the 17th Green (1999), co-starring Robert Urich.
Baxter also played a lesbian mother raising a young son in the CBS after-school special "Other Mothers" in 1993, for which she received a Daytime Emmy best actress nomination.
In the hit series Family Ties, she was Michael Gross' wife and Justine Bateman, Tina Yothers, and Michael J. Fox's mother. Prior to that, she'd been in another "family" series, the late '70s show Family, as James Broderick and Sada Thompson's daughter, and Gary Frank and Kristy McNichol's sister. Family earned her two Emmys nominations. (A third nomination would come in 1992, for the television movie A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick Story.)
One of Baxter's previous husbands was actor David Birney (1974-1989). Academy Award winner Anne Baxter, best known for her portrayal of the scheming young actress in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Oscar-winning classic All About Eve (which, coincidentally, has lesbian undertones), was her aunt.