Sarah Paulson on Dating Older Women: ‘There’s a Poignancy’

Sarah Paulson (Photo: Getty Images)

Last December, when it was revealed that Sarah Paulson was dating screen legend Holland Taylor, the reaction was, as the New York Times points out, “immediate and (rare for a celebrity dating story) almost entirely positive.”

Speaking with the Times, Paulson called the attention “surreal,” but said of their relationship, “What I can say absolutely is that I am in love, and that person happens to be Holland Taylor.”

Though Paulson has shied away from labeling her sexuality — she’s dated both men and women — she does seem to have a type. Before Taylor, who is 32 years her senior, Paulson dated Cherry Jones, who is 18 year older than her.

Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor (Photo: Getty Images)

“There’s a poignancy to being with someone older,” she says. “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. It puts a kind of sharp light mixed with a sort of diffused light on something. I can’t say it any other way than there’s a poignancy to it, and a heightened sense of time and the value of time.”

Paulson, who for the majority of her career has disappeared into roles like the ambitious-to-a-fault reporter on American Horror Story: Coven and, most recently as prosecutor Marcia Clark in The People v. O.J. Simpson, says she understands the attention.

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

Taylor, for her part, hasn’t been at all secretive about their relationship, sharing regular fawning comments about Paulson on Twitter.

There’s a reason these two are everyone’s relationship goals.