|
Claire Danes - Biography |
|
|
|
To look upon the face of Claire
Danes is to discover an exquisitely expressive canvas for all the
emotional colorings of life. This remarkably self-possessed young
performer brought startling authenticity as well as intelligence and
complexity to her starring role in the landmark high school/family drama
"My So-Called Life" (ABC, 1994-95). Danes' often heartrending portrayal of
a fifteen-year-old coping with the rigors of adolescence contributed to
the cult series' avalanche of kudos and won a Golden Globe Award and an
Emmy nod for its rising star. The low-rated, short-lived program counted
Steven Spielberg and Winona Ryder among its followers.
A native New Yorker, Danes was encouraged to pursue her interest in acting
by artistic parents and began studying modern dance at age six. By age
nine, she was taking weekend acting classes at the Lee Strasberg Theatre
Institute, later starting her performing career on the off-off-Broadway
stage with supporting roles in "Happiness", "Punk Ballet" and "Kids on
Stage," even choreographing a solo dance piece for the latter. At age 11,
Danes made her film acting debut portraying a molested child in "Dreams of
Love" (released 1992), a student short from director Jeffrey Mueller and
executive producer Milos Forman. The precocious actress arrived on the
small screen in a memorable 1992 guest shot on the NBC crime drama series
"Law & Order", playing a volatile teen who, with her mother, was involved
with a sleazy photographer. She also auditioned for "My So-Called Life" in
1992, at age 13, and filmed the pilot in early 1993. (It did not air until
August 1994.)
Danes won strong notices for her feature debut as the doomed Beth in a
well-received remake of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel "Little Women"
(1994), with Susan Sarandon and Winona Ryder. (The latter had lobbied for
Danes to get the role.) Indeed, Spielberg hailed her as "one of the most
exciting actresses to debut in ten years" and offered her a role in his
Holocaust drama "Schindler's List" (1993) which Danes declined for a
variety of reasons. When "My So-Called Life" ended prematurely, though,
the young thespian was quickly deluged with feature offers.
Danes next popped up in a flashback sequence playing a younger version of
Anne Bancroft's character in the Ryder vehicle "How to Make an American
Quilt" and followed up with a small role as the wise-beyond-her-years
daughter of Holly Hunter (and granddaughter of Bancroft!) in Jodie
Foster's "Home for the Holidays" (both 1995). Reportedly, Foster's
endorsement helped Danes win the plum role of Juliet opposite Leonardo
DiCaprio's Romeo in "William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet" (1996), a
highly stylized and purposefully anachronistic retelling of the classic
story. By the time of that highly touted release, she had two other
features in the can.
Danes played leads in "To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday" (1996) as the
daughter helping her father (Peter Gallagher) cope with the death of her
mother (Michelle Pfeiffer) and "I Love You, I Love You Not" (1997), as the
granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor (Jeanne Moreau). Positive advance
word about the professional deportment of the ascendant star spurred more
offers for work with such respected filmmakers as Oliver Stone, who cast
her as a white trash princess in the odd "U-Turn" (1997), Francis Ford
Coppola, who hired her to play an abused wife who falls for young lawyer
Matt Damon in "John Grisham's 'The Rainmaker'" (1997), and Bille August,
whose adaptation of "Les Miserables" (1998) appropriately featured the
young actress as Cosette. Danes went on to play an appealingly
strong-willed, unmarried and pregnant Polish-American alongside Gabriel
Byrne and Lena Olin in the charming family saga "Polish Wedding" later
that year.
In 1999, Danes began taking on vastly different roles than what audiences
had come to expect, starting with a turn as a drug offender turned crime
fighter in Scott Silver's uninspired feature update of the hit 1960s TV
series "The Mod Squad.” While Danes performed well in the action genre,
the film was critically panned, and saw little box office business.
Similarly, her impressive turn in "Brokedown Palace" went largely unseen.
Not unlike a feminized, updated "Midnight Express", the harrowing film
starred Danes as the more daring and gregarious of two recent high school
graduates duped into importing drugs into Thailand. Alongside Kate
Beckinsale, the actress proved her mettle with the edgy role, but the film
would probably be best remembered for Danes' candidly negative comments
about the Manila filming conditions, which won her few fans in the
Philippines. She next contributed her vocal talents to the English dubbing
of Hayao Miyazaki's acclaimed Japanese anime "Princess Mononoke". Perhaps
something was lost in the translation, but her lackluster performance in
this capacity proved the actress' talents lie before the camera, where her
proven skills and appeal would ensure her a long and illustrious career.
In 2002, she co-starred in the indie comedy feature "Igby Goes Down,"
playing a prep school girl caught between two drastically different
brothers; and portrayed Meryl Streep's daughter Julia in "The Hours,"
before doing a career about-face in 2003 by starring opposite Arnold
Schwarzenegger in the action-packed sequel "Terminator 3: The Rise of the
Machines," playing Kate Brewster, the love interest for humanity's
emerging messiah in its war against the machines, John Conner (Nick
Stahl). After filming "Stage Beauty" (2004), in which she played a 17th
Century stage dresser who becomes an actress after England's king
overrules the long tradition of men playing female roles in plays and
becomes entangled with a displaced actor (Billy Cruddup) who specialized
in portraying women, Danes got her first taste of tabloid celebrity when
Cruddup left his several-months-pregnant girlfriend, actress Mary-Louise
Parker, for a romance with her in 2003.
She returned to the screen for "Shopgirl" (2005), an adaptation of Steve
Martin's bestselling 2001 novella which cast her as a forlorn Beverly
Hills glove salesgirl who unexpectedly finds herself pursued by a pair of
polar opposite suitors, a successful sophisticate (Martin) and a Bohemian
dreamer (Jason Schawartzman). Danes then costarred in “The Family Stone”
(2005), a romantic dramedy about the eldest son (Dermot Mulroney) in a
bohemian family who brings his high-powered and controlling girlfriend
(Sarah Jessica Parker) home for their annual holiday gathering, as
conflicting attitudes causes awkwardness, confusion and ultimately
hostility. In late 2005, she began filming “The Flock,” a crime thriller
about a vigilant federal agent (Richard Gere) who trains his young female
replacement (Danes) while tracking down a missing girl he’s convinced is
connected to a paroled sex offender. |
|
|
|
Claire Danes - Personal Quotes |
|
|
|
(On co-star Kate Beckinsale on
hoping to become friends) "That was wrong. We didn't. She's
complicated. She's prickly".
"I live in an adult World, but I'm a kid. I love the work. But I no
longer have a group of friends to hang out with regularly."
(on education vs. career) "I was told that my going to college
wouldn't be good for my career. I think that's nonsense. It's good
to empower yourself by cutting yourself off from this business every
once in a while."
"I have a huge, active imagination, [and] I think I'm really scared
of being alone; because if I'm left to my own devices, I'll just
turn into a madwoman."
"My line about Arnold is that he doesn't get in his own way. He is
not apologetic about achieving his goals. And when you have that
attitude, it's amazing what one can accomplish. He wanted to give me
relationship advice. I was having trouble with a female friend, and
he said, be really forthright and do not accommodate her needs
excessively. I took his advice and we're not friends anymore. So
there you go."
"I was intimidated. There was the accent, the period of the film,
and I had to act badly. I kept laughing during those scenes because
I was god-awful. I've worked so hard to be good, and now I had to
work even harder to be bad" [On Stage Beauty (2004)].
"It's very difficult to judge yourself. Extreme self-doubt is only
attractive when it's fictionalized. Which is why people love the
movies. They are so reassuring."
"I had an unwavering focus. My parents never condescended to me. As
a child, I always sat at the head of our dinner table. I was always
given a lot of responsibility. It was all rather amazing when I
think about it now."
"I was a very confident child. I knew I wanted to be an actress from
the age of 5. Madonna was my original muse -- around 5, I saw her
perform on TV, and I realized that performing could be one's
vocation. Then, at 7 or 8, I realized that most actors don't make a
lot of money, and I amended my plan. But at 9, I seized my destiny.
I made a formal announcement to my parents that I had to be true to
my art. Money or no money, acting is my calling".
"I never thought of myself as a child actor. I knew I was a kid, but
they weren't related. There was nothing I could do about being a
kid, and meanwhile I was an actress, and I had something to say in
my acting."
"I think that everybody wants to create, to do something that feels
genuine and kinetic and spontaneous. I think actors want to surprise
themselves. When it's really good, you kind of transcend yourself,
and that happens infrequently. Very, very rarely. You might get one
or two of those moments on a film, say, and sometimes they don't
even use the takes where that happens. And I'm not really that
moralistic about how you get there."
"I would like to have a family, but I'm trying not to make any
plans, because when I do, everything goes wrong." [On having
children, December 21, 2005]
"I'll never wear a thong again. I'm a Speedo gal" - on her shocking
swimsuit scene in To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday (1996).
"Usually, my social life and my sanity and my health are the things
that are sacrificed" -on her non-stop work schedule.
"The point of acting is to share, to connect. That's why I act.
Acting is the greatest answer to my loneliness that I have found." |
| |
|
Claire Danes - Filmography |
| |
|
Stardust (2007) .... Yvaine
Evening (2007) .... Young Ann
The Flock (2007) .... Allison Laurie
The Family Stone (2005) .... Julie Morton
Shopgirl (2005) .... Mirabelle Buttersfield
Stage Beauty (2004) .... Maria
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) .... Kate Brewster
... aka T3 (USA: promotional abbreviation)
... aka Terminator 3 - Rebellion der Maschinen (Germany)
The Rage in Placid Lake (2003) .... Girl at Seminar
It's All About Love (2003) .... Elena
The Hours (2002) .... Julia Vaughan
Igby Goes Down (2002) .... Sookie Sapperstein
Brokedown Palace (1999) .... Alice Marano
The Mod Squad (1999) .... Julie Barnes
Misérables, Les (1998) .... Cosette
... aka Misérables, Les (Germany)
Polish Wedding (1998) .... Hala
The Rainmaker (1997) .... Kelly Riker
... aka John Grisham's The Rainmaker
"Saturday Night Live" .... Host (1 episode, 1997)
... aka NBC's Saturday Night (USA: first season title)
... aka SNL (USA: informal title)
... aka SNL 25 (USA: alternative title)
... aka Saturday Night (USA: second season title)
... aka Saturday Night Live '80 (USA: sixth season title)
- Episode #23.6 (1997) TV Episode .... Host
U Turn (1997) .... Jenny
... aka U Turn - Ici commence l'enfer (France)
Mononoke-hime (1997) (voice: English version) .... San
... aka Princess Mononoke (USA)
Romeo + Juliet (1996) .... Juliet
... aka Romeo and Juliet
... aka William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (USA: complete title)
To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday (1996) .... Rachel Lewis
I Love You, I Love You Not (1996) .... Daisy/Young Nana
Home for the Holidays (1995) .... Kitt Larson
How to Make an American Quilt (1995) .... Young Glady Jo Cleary
"My So-Called Life" .... Angela Chase (19 episodes, 1994-1995)
- In Dreams Begin Responsibilities (1995) TV Episode .... Angela
Chase
- Weekend (1995) TV Episode .... Angela Chase
- Betrayal (1995) TV Episode .... Angela Chase
- Resolutions (1995) TV Episode .... Angela Chase
- So-Called Angels (1994) TV Episode .... Angela Chase
(14 more)
The Pesky Suitor (1995) .... Lisa
Dead Man's Jack (1995)
Little Women (1994) .... Beth March
"Lifestories: Families in Crisis" .... Katie Leiter (1 episode,
1994)
- More Than Friends: The Coming Out of Heidi Leiter (1994) TV
Episode .... Katie Leiter
Geoffrey Beene 30 (1993) .... Girl
"Law & Order" .... Tracy Brandt (1 episode, 1992)
... aka Law & Order Prime (USA: informal title)
- Skin Deep (1992) TV Episode .... Tracy Brandt
Dreams of Love (1990) |
| |
|
Claire Danes - Related Links |
|
Wikipedia: Claire Danes
YouTube: Claire Danes
Claire Danes at Babemania.com
Top Celebrities Sites:
The Celebrity
Cafe |
| |
|
|
|
