Claire Danes

 ( 1979 Births ) 

She then starred as the 15-year-old Angela Chase in the television drama series My So-Called Life. In March 1993, a pilot episode was shot; it would be almost another year and a half before broadcast. For her role, she won a Golden Globe Award and received an Emmy Award nomination. Despite being canceled after only 19 episodes, My So-Called Life has developed a large cult following.

Her first leading role on the big screen came in 1996, when she portrayed Juliet in the film Romeo + Juliet, inspiring director Baz Luhrmann to call her, at age 16, "the Meryl Streep of her generation". Later that year, it was reported that she turned down the female lead role in Titanic.

In 1997, Danes played abused wife Kelly Riker in The Rainmaker, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, as well as Jenny in Oliver Stone's noir U Turn.

In 1998, she played several very different roles: Cosette in Les Misérables, and the pregnant teenage daughter of Polish immigrants in Polish Wedding.

In 1999, she made her first appearance in an animated feature with the English version of Princess Mononoke. That same year, she played the role of Julie Barnes in the big screen adaptation of the 1970s TV show The Mod Squad. She also starred in Brokedown Palace.

Danes left her career temporarily to attend Yale, having made 13 films in five years. In 2002, she returned to film. She starred in Igby Goes Down. Later that year, she co-starred as Clarissa Vaughan's (played by Meryl Streep) daughter in the Academy Awards-nominated film The Hours. The following year, she was cast in , followed by Stage Beauty in 2004. She earned critical acclaim in 2005 when she starred in Shopgirl and The Family Stone. In 2007, she appeared in the fantasy Stardust, which she described as a "classic model of romantic comedy". In 2007, she appeared in the drama film, Evening, and the thriller film, The Flock. She was also featured in the 2008 film, Me and Orson Welles.

In September 2005, Danes returned to New York's Performance Space 122, where she had performed as a child. She appeared in choreographer Tamar Rogoff's solo dance piece "Christina Olson: American Model", where she portrayed the subject of Andrew Wyeth's famous painting Christina's World. Olson suffered from muscular deterioration that left her weak and partially paralyzed. Danes was praised for her dance skills and acting in the project.

In January 2007, Danes performed in Performance Space 122's Edith and Jenny. Later in 2007, Danes made her Broadway theatre debut as Eliza Doolittle in the Roundabout Theatre Company revival of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, directed by David Grindley at the American Airlines Theatre.

In January 2012, Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Theatricals named Danes their 2012 Woman of the Year.

In March 2016, Danes performed in Dry Powder by Sarah Burgess at The Public Theater, starring alongside John Krasinski, Hank Azaria and Sanjit De Silva. The play was directed by Thomas Kail.

In 1997, Danes wrote an introduction to Neil Gaiman's .

In 2012, Danes's audiobook recording of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale was released at Audible.com. Her performance won the 2013 Audie Award for fiction.

In 2013, she hosted the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo.

In 2015, Danes was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Danes has attended Psychotherapy since the age of six and considers it "a helpful tool and a luxury to self-reflect and get some insight".

In 1998, as a result of comments made in a Vogue interview, Danes was declared persona non grata in Manila by the city's City Council. Restrictions imposed on Danes involved a ban from entering Manila and prohibition on distribution of her films in the region. The censure came after Danes said Manila, the capital of the Philippines, smelled of cockroaches, with rats all over, and that there is no sewage system. Danes later apologized for those remarks.

Danes and her mother are supporters of the charity Afghan Hands, which helps women in Afghanistan gain independence, education, and livable wages. Danes is also a long time supporter of DonorsChoose, a website that allows public school teachers to create project requests.

Danes is a feminism and has been critical of female underrepresentation within Hollywood.

In 2003, Danes began dating actor Billy Crudup, with whom she starred in Stage Beauty. Their relationship attracted significant media attention, as it led to Crudup's break-up with actress Mary-Louise Parker, who was seven months pregnant with their son William at the time. Danes and Crudup's relationship lasted until 2006. Reflecting on their relationship, Danes had commented in 2015, "That was a scary thing. It was really hard. I didn't know how to not do that. I was just in love with him, and needed to explore that, and I was 24 ... I didn't quite know what those consequences would be. But it's OK. I went through it."

Danes met actor Hugh Dancy on the set of the film Evening in 2006. They announced their engagement in February 2009 and married in France later that year. They have three children: two sons born in 2012 and 2018, and a daughter born in 2023.