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Claire Danes

Claire Catherine Danes (born April 12, 1979) is a Golden Globe Award-winning and Emmy Award-nominated American film, television, and theater actress most known for the television series My So-Called Life and the films Romeo + Juliet, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, and Stardust.

Biography

Early life

Danes was born in Manhattan, New York City. Her mother, Carla, is a day-care provider, painter, and textile designer who would later serve as her daughter's manager, and her father, Christopher Danes, is a computer consultant and former architectural photographer. Danes has described her background as being "as WASPy as you can get"; her paternal grandfather, Gibson A. Danes, was the dean of the art and architecture school at Yale University. She has a brother, Asa, who graduated from Oberlin College and works as a litigation attorney for the law firm of Paul Hastings.

Danes attended the Dalton School in New York City, the New York City Lab School for Collaborative Studies, the Professional Performing Arts School, and the Lycée Français de Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California. In 1998, Danes went to Yale University (her father's alma mater). After studying for two years as a psychology major, she dropped out of Yale to focus on her film career.

Career

In 1994, Danes starred as Angela Chase in the television drama series My 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 adaptation of Little Women. She also appeared as Holly Hunter's daughter in Home for the Holidays, which was directed by Jodie Foster. She portrayed Juliet Capulet in Baz Luhrmann's 1996 film William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, co-starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo Montague. Later that year, she turned down the lead role of Rose DeWitt Bukater in Titanic because she had been exhausted by working on Romeo + Juliet. In 1999, she made her first appearance in an animated feature with the English version of Princess Mononoke, and took the lead role in Brokedown Palace, alongside Kate Beckinsale and Bill Pullman.

In 2002, Danes starred opposite Susan Sarandon and Kieran Culkin in Igby Goes Down. She later co-starred as Meryl Streep's daughter in the Oscar-nominated, The Hours, with Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, and Ed Harris. The following year, she was cast in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, followed by Stage Beauty in 2004. She earned critical acclaim in 2005 when she starred in Steve Martin's Shopgirl alongside Martin and Jason Schwartzman, and in The Family Stone opposite Sarah Jessica Parker and Diane Keaton. In 2007, Danes appeared in the fantasy epic Stardust, which she described as a "classic model of romantic comedy", opposite Charlie Cox, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert De Niro, and Sienna Miller, and will appear in The Flock, opposite Richard Gere.

Danes appeared in Off-Broadway plays including Happiness, Punk Ballet, and Kids On Stage, in which she choreographed her own solo dance. She also wrote the introduction to Neil Gaiman's Death: The Time of Your Life. Danes auditioned for the role of Lois Lane in Superman Returns before the role went to Kate Bosworth.

In March 2007, Danes appeared with Patrick Wilson in a television commercial for 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 avant-garde performance space, in a series of dance pieces by choreographer Tamar Rogoff. Danes made her stage debut at PS122 as a child.

On October 19, 2007, Danes made her Broadway debut in the revival of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, starring as Eliza Doolittle.

Personal life

Danes had her first onscreen kiss in an episode of My So-Called Life before she had one in real life. After meeting at her birthday party, she and Australian singer Ben Lee dated for almost six years, their relationship ending in 2003. Beginning in 2004, she dated her Stage Beauty and Princess Mononoke co-star Billy Crudup, which generated negative publicity due to rumors that their relationship caused the end of Crudup's relationship to then-pregnant Mary-Louise Parker. Both denied that they were involved prior to the end of Crudup's relationship with Parker. Danes' relationship with Crudup ended in December 2006, amid rumors of an affair by Danes with Hugh Dancy, her co-star in Evening. Danes confirmed on the June 27, 2007 episode of Late Show with David Letterman that she is dating Dancy. Additionally, she has dated Andrew Dorff, actor Stephen Dorff's younger brother, and Matt Damon.

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." She further remarked in Premiere that the city "smelled of cockroaches, with rats all over and that there is no sewerage system and the people do not have anything — no arms, no legs, no eyes." 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." Her films were subsequently banned from being screened in the Philippines. Joseph Estrada, then-President of the Philippines, condemned her publicly, and she was declared persona non grata. Shortly after the incident, Danes issued an apology in Entertainment Weekly to the City of Manila.

Filmography

Film

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1990	Dreams of Love
1994	Little Women	Beth March
1995	How to Make an American Quilt	Young Glady Jo Cleary
1995	Home for the Holidays	Kitt Larson
1996	I Love You, I Love You Not	Daisy/Young Nana
	Romeo + Juliet	Juliet Capulet
	To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday	Rachel Lewis
1997	Princess Mononoke	San	(voice)
	U Turn	Jenny
	The Rainmaker	Kelly Riker
1998	Les Misérables	Cosette
1998	Polish Wedding	Hala
1999	The Mod Squad	Julie Barnes
1999	Brokedown Palace	Alice Marano
2002	Igby Goes Down	Sookie Sapperstein
2002	The Hours	Julia Vaughn
2003	It's All About Love	Elena
	The Rage In Placid Lake	Girl at Seminar
	Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines	Kate Brewster
2004	Stage Beauty	Maria
2005	Shopgirl	Mirabelle Buttersfield
2005	The Family Stone	Julie Morton
2007	Evening	Young Ann
	Stardust	Yvaine
	The Flock	Allison
2009	Me and Orson Welles	Sonja Jones