Claire Danes biography

Synopsis

Early Years

Claire Catherine Danes was born on April 12, 1979, in New York City, New York. While neither of Danes's parents were involved in show business—her father Chris is a computer consultant, her mother Carla a textile designer. Danes showed an early interest in the stage. "I was very driven to act from a very young age, and my parents were not only tolerant of that drive but also encouraging," she told The Guardian newspaper in 2005.

For Danes, a passion for acting had come at the age of six, when she began studying modern dance and caught a whiff of life on the stage. Her parents enrolled her in a performing arts school, Danes took Saturday morning acting classes and soon landed an agent.

Her career was far from an overnight success. With her parents support, Danes maintained an early, sporadic television schedule. She made a few appearances on NBC's Law & Order, and was eventually cast on a failed pilot starring Dudley Moore.

In 1992, Danes caught her first big break when she landed the starring role of Angela Chase, a curious, hyper-intelligent teen in the ABC series, My So Called Life. But the network was not so quick to add it to its prime-time lineup.

Finally, though, after nearly two years of waiting, the show made it on television. While ratings for the program never ballooned, the show proved to be a hit with critics, and Danes's performance was a big reason why. Danes even earned a Golden Globe for Best Actress, but ABC's patience for the show was thin, and the series was pulled after just 19 episodes.

Broader Success

Even before the end of her television show, Danes had started to make serious inroads in the film world. In 1994 she made her feature debut in Little Women, opposite Kirsten Dunst, Christian Bale, and Winona Ryder. A year later she appeared in How to Make an American Quilt.

By the late 1990s, Danes's film career only seemed to have an upward trajectory. She co-starred with Leonardo DiCaprio in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1996), had a major role in The Rainmaker (1997), and took on the role of Cosette in version of Victor Hugo's classic tale, Les Misérables (1998).

For Danes, however, something was missing. In 1998, she put her film career on hold to pursue an undergraduate degree at Yale University. "I needed to find myself," she explained. "I had played so many roles but I didn't really know who I was."

Danes would go on to complete two years at Yale before slowly returning to her acting career. There were small roles at first, like The Hours (2002), before Danes was back at it full-time. In 2003 she co-starred in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.