Best Known As: Angela Chase on TV's My So-Called Life
Claire Danes made a splash as the teen heroine of My So-Called Life, a 1990s TV homage to high school angst that became a cult favorite. An actor since childhood, she jumped successfully to the big screen in 1997's Romeo and Juliet, playing Juliet to Leonardo DiCaprio's Romeo. She has since appeared in several movies, usually in supporting roles, including the film version of John Grisham's The Rainmaker (1997, starring Matt Damon), Igby Goes Down (2002) and The Hours (2002, starring Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman). Her other films include Oliver Stone's U Turn (1997, with Sean Penn), Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines (2003, with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Steve Martin's Shopgirl (2005).
Following in the footsteps of Jodie Foster, Danes enrolled in Yale University in the fall of 1998.
Career Highlights: Princess Mononoke, Little Women, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet
First Major Screen Credit: Little Women (1994)
Biography
Since 1994, audiences have watched as Claire Danes has matured from awkward teen to one of the most popular actresses of her generation. Whether portraying the angst-ridden Angela Chase on My So-Called Life or trailer park trash in Oliver Stone's U-Turn, Danes has consistently displayed an uncommon maturity and insight in her performances that belies her relative inexperience. Her ability has won over countless critics and fans and has allowed her the opportunity to work with luminaries ranging from Jeanne Moreau to Jodie Foster and Francis Ford Coppola.
Claire Catherine Danes was born April 12, 1979 in New York City and began acting shortly thereafter. With the support of her artistically-inclined parents (a painter mother and photographer father), Danes enrolled in an acting class at the Lee Strasberg Studio when she was nine years old. After attending the Professional Performing Arts School for the sixth and seventh grade, she went to Los Angeles in the hopes of being cast in Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (Danes had previously appeared in an episode of Law and Order and in Dreams of Love, an obscure film produced by Milos Forman). While she was waiting for Spielberg's decision, serendipity struck in the form of the makers of a new TV show called My So-Called Life, who wanted Danes to star in their production. Danes agreed to do the show after turning down the role that Spielberg had decided to give her. Always someone interested in learning, Danes rejected Spielberg's offer because she wouldn't be able to receive schooling in Poland, where the movie was to be filmed.
Premiering in 1994, My So-Called Life lasted only a couple of seasons, but garnered critical praise and a cult following during its brief lifetime. Moreover, it made Danes, if not a star, then a star in the making. Hollywood opened its bleary eyes and took notice, and soon Danes was being touted as the Next Big Thing. During the run of My So-Called Life, Danes starred as the saintly, sickly Beth in Gillian Armstrong's adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic Little Women (1994). The film was a success, and allowed Danes to perform in the company of such well-respected actors as Susan Sarandon, Winona Ryder, and Gabriel Byrne (who would later play her father in Polish Wedding).
After making two more films, which continued Danes' pattern of starring in movies that behaved badly at the box office despite having bankable actors (Jeanne Moreau in the straight-to-video I Love You, I Love You Not (1996) and Michelle Pfeiffer in To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday (1996)), Danes hit it big with Baz Luhrmann's wildly popular William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996). Her portrayal of Juliet broke the hearts and opened the tear ducts of many, while her pairing with Hot Young Thing Leonardo DiCaprio undoubtedly caused mass swooning incidents in theatres the world over.
The critical and commercial success of the film meant that Danes was soon in great demand, as evidenced by the people she was able to work with over the next couple of years. After Romeo + Juliet, Danes worked with Oliver Stone on the lunatics-in-a-small-desert-town picture U-Turn (1997), a film that caused consternation among critics and at the box office. Danes' turn as Joaquin Phoenix's trashy girlfriend represented a departure from her previous, more innocent roles, something that she embellished upon in both Francis Ford Coppola's The Rainmaker, where she played Andrew Shue's abused wife, and A Polish Wedding (1998), in which she portrayed the rebellious Hala. Neither movie was particularly successful, an unfortunate bit of luck that continued with Danes' next two efforts, Les Miserables (1998) and The Mod Squad (1998), the latter of which, despite the high anticipation surrounding its release, was panned by critics who complained it looked more like a Diesel ad than a movie, and largely ignored by the public.
Through it all, Danes has remained in the media spotlight, appearing on countless magazine covers and as the object of speculation for many. Aside from the bad publicity surrounding remarks she made about the Phillipines during the making of Brokedown Palace (1999), and her subsequent banning from that country, she has continued to attract positive attention for everything from her enrollment at Yale University in 1998 to her boyfriends, who include the Australian rocker Ben Lee.
Despite a series of misses during the late 90's, Danes came back with several small but critically acclaimed roles. In Igby Goes Down (2002), she played the confused love interest of the title character, starred alongside Sean Penn in director Thomas Vinterburg's It's All About Love (2002), and took part in the Academy-Award winning The Hours (2002). While her performance in The Rage at Placid Lake (a 2003 Australian production featuring her boyfriend Ben Lee) went largely unnoticed, mainstream audiences got their chance to see Danes butting heads on screen with Arnold Schwarzenegger and newcomer Nick Stahl in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. In 2004, Danes will join Steve Martin in the adaptations of Martin's bestselling fiction novella, Shopgirl. ~ Rebecca Flint, All Movie Guide
Danes was born in Manhattan to Christopher Danes, a computer consultant and former
architectural photographer, and Carla, a day care provider, painter, and textile designer who would later serve as Claire's manager. Danes has described her background as being "as
WASPy as you can get";[1] her paternal grandfather, Gibson A. Danes, was the dean of
the art and architecture school at Yale University.[2][3] She has
a brother, Asa, who graduated from Oberlin College and works as a litigation attorney
for the law firm of Paul Hastings.
Danes is perhaps most famous for bringing Angela Chase to life in the 1994
televisiondramaseriesMy So-Called Life, for which she won a
Golden Globe Award and received an Emmy
nomination. She played Elizabeth ("Beth") March in the 1994 movie adaption of Little
Women. She also appeared as Holly Hunter's daughter in Home For The Holidays, which
was directed by Jodie Foster. This was followed by her role as Juliet in Baz Luhrmann's 1996 film [[William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet]] co-starring Leonardo DiCaprio. The same year she turned down the part of Rose in Titanic due to exhaustion from
Romeo and Juliet. Her first role in an animated feature came in 1999 with the English version of Princess Mononoke. During the same year, she took the lead role in Brokedown Palace, alongside Kate Beckinsale and
Bill Pullman.
In March 2007, Danes appeared with Patrick Wilson in a television commercial
for the Gap in which the pair dances to the song "Anything You Can Do" from the musical Annie Get
Your Gun. Danes has recently appeared onstage at Manhattan's PS122, an iconic avant-garde performance space, in a
series of dance pieces by the choreographer Tamar Rogoff. Danes made her stage debut at PS122 as a child.[7]
Starting in September, Danes will make her Broadway debut in the revival of George
Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion starring as Eliza Doolittle.[8]
Personal life
After meeting at her birthday party, she and Australian singer Ben Lee dated for almost six years, but their relationship ended in 2003. Since 2004 she dated her Stage
Beauty and Princess Mononoke co-star Billy Crudup, but this resulted in bad
publicity for both, as he had left his previous longtime partner, actress Mary-Louise
Parker, 7 months pregnant. Even though both vehemently denied that they had gotten involved at this point, the pressure
was too much for a long time and eventually the pair split in December 2006. Additionally, she has dated Andrew Dorff, actor
Stephen Dorff's younger brother, and Matt Damon. Danes
stated on the 27 June 2007 episode of Late
Show with David Letterman that she is dating Evening co-star
Hugh Dancy.
Claire Danes and her Stardust Co-star, Charlie Cox, have been great friends ever since
filming together in the movie. Charlie Cox confirmed this during his interview with Rove. [citation needed]
Controversy
In 1998, just after the filming of Brokedown Palace in Manila, she was quoted in Vogue as saying that Manila was a
"ghastly and weird city".[9]
She further remarked in Premiere that the city, "smelled of cockroaches, with
rats all over and that there is no sewage system and the people do not have anything -- no arms, no legs, no eyes".[9] Kim Atienza, son of then-Mayor of
Manila, Lito Atienza, responded to the comments by saying that, "those are irresponsible,
bigoted and sweeping statements that we cannot accept".[9] Her films were subsequently banned from being screened in the Philippines.[10]Joseph Estrada, then-President of the Philippines, condemned her publicly,[11] and she was declared persona non
grata.[12] Shortly after the incident, Danes issued
an apology in Entertainment Weekly to the City of Manila.[10]
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