Claire Catherine Danes (born on April 12, 1979) is an American film, television and theatre actress.
Danes was born in Manhattan to Chris Danes (a computer consultant and former architectural photographer) and Carla (a day care provider, painter, and textile designer who works as Claire's manager), and is 5 feet, 5 inches tall. She has a brother, Asa, who graduated from Oberlin College and works as a not-for-profit organizer. Danes attended the exclusive private high school Le Lycee Francais De Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California, and later attended Yale University (her father's alma mater) for two years as a Psychology major starting in 1998. She dropped out of Yale to focus on her film career.
Danes is perhaps most famous as Angela Chase in the 1994 television drama series My So-Called Life for which she won a Golden Globe Award and received an Emmy nomination, followed by her role as Juliet in Baz Luhrmann's 1996 film Romeo + Juliet.
In 1999, while filming for Brokedown Palace, she and all material related to her were “banned” from the Philippines after she publicly criticized the capital, Manila, as "ghastly" and "smells like cockroaches". She later apologized for her comments for which she blamed as being "taken out of context." However, she remains banned from the country to this day.
Her first role in an animated feature came in 1999 with the English version of Princess Mononoke.
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 and 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 will appear in the fantasy epic Stardust opposite Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert DeNiro, and Sienna Miller, and 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.
For a number of years, she and Australian singer Ben Lee dated, but their relationship ended in 2003. She is now dating her Stage Beauty and Princess Mononoke co-star Billy Crudup.
