1979-present
Latest News: Claire Danes Returns to TV in Netflix’s The Beast in Me
Claire Danes is used to portraying complicated women, but her latest role is unlike anything she’s played before. As the star of the Netflix series The Beast in Me, the Emmy-winning actor plays Aggie Wiggs, a grief-stricken author who becomes obsessed with her enigmatic neighbor, real estate mogul Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys), who was suspected in the disappearance of his first wife.
While still mourning the death of her son, Aggie makes Nile the subject of her next book, but her research soon turns into a dangerous mind game. In an interview with People magazine in November, Danes revealed that she was drawn to her character because of how different Aggie is from her previous roles.
“I loved this character who was just kind of a wild amalgam of qualities that I hadn’t quite played before,” she said. “She’s really quite introverted and controlled and contained, but also has this animalistic energy, and that was in an enjoyable contrast.”
The 46-year-old previously starred in Fleishman Is in Trouble (2022) as a woman in the middle of a nervous breakdown and spent 10 years in Homeland as Carrie Mathison, a CIA agent suffering from bipolar disorder.
Calling the series “tasteful and grisly,” Danes went on to explain that Aggie ultimately finds a “very dangerous soulmate” in Nile. “It felt a little Hitchcockian to me.”
All eight episodes of The Beast in Me are now streaming on Netflix.
Who Is Claire Danes?
Claire Danes is an award-winning actor who captivated audiences with her performance in the Showtime series Homeland. The Manhattan native rose to fame as a teenager in the critically acclaimed but short-lived 1994 series My So Called Life and went on to pursue a variety of roles in both art films and more expensive blockbusters, including Romeo+Juliet and Terminator 3. Beginning in 2011, Danes reestablished herself in TV as CIA agent Carrie Mathison on Homeland, which earned her both Emmy and Golden Globe awards. Her recent credits include Fleishman Is in Trouble and The Beast in Me.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Claire Catherine Danes
BORN: April 12, 1979
BIRTHPLACE: Manhattan, New York
SPOUSE: Hugh Dancy (2009-present)
CHILDREN: Cyrus, Rowan, and daughter
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aries
Early Life and Career
Claire Catherine Danes was born on April 12, 1979, in Manhattan, New York. Her father, Christopher, was a photographer and contractor, and her mother, Carla, was a textile designer and day care owner. Growing up in an artistic household with her older brother, Asa, Danes was encouraged to pursue acting at an early age. “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 in 2005.
Danes first discovered her passion for performing when she began studying modern dance at the age of 6. Having caught a whiff of life on the stage, she soon shifted her focus to acting. Danes started taking acting classes at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Instigate at 10 years old and later enrolled at the Professional Performing Arts School. and was auditioning for roles in student films by age 11. She landed her first agent a year later—but her career was far from an overnight success. “I was 12 when my first job offer was to be on a soap opera,” Danes recalled to the New York Times in January 2010. “I turned it down because I didn’t want to develop bad habits.”
With her parents’ support, Danes maintained an early, sporadic television schedule. She made her first TV appearance in an episode of Law & Order in 1992 and was later cast in a failed pilot, starring Dudley Moore.
Movies and TV Shows
Breakout Role in My So-Called Life
At 13 years old, Danes caught her first big break when she landed the starring role of Angela Chase, a curious, hyper-intelligent teen in the series My So-Called Life, which premiered in 1994. After landing the role, she and her family moved to California, where she attended the private high school, Le Lycée Français de Los Angeles.
While ratings for the program never ballooned, My So-Called Life proved to be a hit with critics, with Danes even winning a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a TV Drama in 1995. However, the network's patience for the show was thin, and the series was pulled after just one season.
Little Women and How to Make an American Quilt
Even before the end of her television show, Danes had started to make her way onto the big screen. She made her feature film debut in 1994's Little Women, based on the Louisa May Alcott book of the same name. Starring opposite Kirsten Dunst, Christian Bale and Winona Ryder, Danes played the quiet and pilot Beth March, who dies of scarlet fever.
A year later, she joined Ryder in How to Make an American Quilt, appearing as younger version of Anne Bancroft's Glady Joe Cleary. The young actor also played Holly Hunter's teenage daughter in the 1995 film Home for the Holidays.
Romeo + Juliet and The Rainmaker
By the late 1990s, Danes's film career was on an upward trajectory. In 1996, she landed her first leading film role in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, a modern retelling of the famous William Shakespeare play. Starring alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Danes received high praise for her performance and the film was a box office hit.
She soon scored another major role in the 1997 legal drama The Rainmaker, in which she played a victim of domestic violence. The following year, she was cast as Cosette in an update of Victor Hugo's classic tale Les Misérables.
The Hours and Terminator 3
After graduating high school, Danes put her film career on hold in 1998 to pursue an undergraduate degree at Yale University, where she studied for two years. “I went there thinking I would be a psychology major, and then a fine arts major. But I didn’t stay,” she told The Washington Post in September 2013. “I’m sure I missed something but I learned how to think critically and read and write. I felt basically fulfilled.”
After dropping out of Yale, Danes slowly returned to her acting career, taking on small roles in 2002's Igby Goes Down and The Hours. By the 2003, Danes was fully back in the swing of things, co-starring alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in the blockbuster Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
Shopgirl and Temple Grandin
The actor continued to tackle leading roles in a wide range of films. In 2005, Danes starred in the romantic comedy Shopgirl, portraying a retail worker who falls for an older, wealthy customer, and played Sarah Jessica Parker's sister in the holiday drama The Family Stone. This was soon followed by the 2007 films Evening and Stardust , among other projects.
Venturing back to the small screen, she portrayed autistic scientist and academic Temple Grandin in the 2010 HBO movie Temple Grandin, which brought the talented actor her first Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie. She also won a Golden Globe in a similar category in 2011. Danes spend several hours with Grandin to prepare the role. “I asked her a lot of questions and she was incredibly open and available,” she told the New York Times. “Then at the end she gave me a hug. You know, for her, that’s not easy. So that was very moving for me. That was the validation that I was looking for.”
Emmy Wins for Homeland
Danes soon moved on to another television triumph with Homeland. Debuting in 2011, the series featured Dane as CIA agent Carrie Mathison, who suspects a Marine sergeant (Damian Lewis) of being involved in a possible terror plot. The role brought Dane strong reviews and numerous accolades, including Emmy wins for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series and Golden Globes in 2012 and 2013. She also won Golden Globes for Best Actress in a TV Drama those same years. The show's wins underscored its standing as one of TV's premier programs.
After eight gripping seasons, Homeland came to an end in 2020. “It was just so nice to play the smartest person in the room, somebody who was so daring and unapologetically ambitious and such a badass,” Danes told The Guardian at the time. “She’s not really going away.”
While her big-screen projects largely took a backseat during her lengthy run on Homeland, the actor all appeared in the 2017 comedy Brigsby Bear and the 2018 drama A Kid Like Jake.
Fleishman Is in Trouble and The Beast in Me
In 2022, Danes returned to TV in Hulu’s dramatic miniseries Fleishman Is in Trouble. Co-starring alongside Jesse Eisenberg and Lizzy Caplan, she played a recently divorced woman in the midst of a nervous breakdown. She also played a widow in the romantic period drama The Essex Serpent. The following year, Danes appeared in another mini-series, Full Circle, about an investigation into a botched kidnapping.
The actor’s latest project is the Netflix mini-series The Beast in Me, which arrived in November 2025. In the show, she plays a grief-stricken writer who develops a dangerous obsession with her neighbor. Danes told People she was drawn to the role due to her character's “animalistic energy.”
Husband Hugh Dancy and Children
Danes is married to British actor Hugh Dancy, with whom she shares three children. The couple met in 2006 while filming the drama Evening. While they started off as friends, they soon began dating the following year. Several months after getting engaged, Danes and Dancy got married in a small ceremony in France in September 2009. They had their first child together, a son named Cyrus, in December 2012, and welcomed a second son, Rowan, in August 2018. Danes gave birth to their third child, a daughter, in July 2023. The couple has yet to reveal her name.
“I feel very secure,” she said of her marriage, per People magazine. “It helps when you are in love with the person you are married to. I do sometimes look at him and think: ‘You are really handsome.’ He keeps me sane and happy.”
Before she was married to Dancy, Danes was in a relationship with actor Billy Crudup, who she met on the set of Stage Beauty (2004). The controversial romance began as an affair, with Crudup leaving his then-girlfriend, Mary-Louise Parker, who was seven months pregnant. The two dated for four years before splitting up in 2007. Prior to that, she was in a six-year relationship with singer Ben Lee.
Net Worth
As of November 2025, Danes has an estimated net worth of $35 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth.
Quotes
- Acting is the greatest answer to my loneliness that I have found.
- I think people confuse fame with validation or love. But fame is not the reward. The reward is getting fulfilment out of doing the thing you love.
- If you do something that you're not genuinely passionate about, it is a little soul-crushing. Just not worth it.
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Catherine Caruso joined the Biography.com staff in August 2024, having previously worked as a freelance journalist for several years. She is a graduate of Syracuse University, where she studied English literature. When she’s not working on a new story, you can find her reading, hitting the gym, or watching too much TV.
