Claire Danes Biography And Filmography:

To see the face of Claire Danes is to see a gracefully open actress. This amazingly self-possessed young actor brought amazing legitimacy as well as aptitude and intricacy to her starring role in the smash hit high school family drama "My So-Called Life" (1994-95). Her often tear-jerking role of a fifteen-year-old dealing with the problems of young teen angst led to the cult series flood of critical reviews and won a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy nomination for the rising star. The show boasted Steven Spielberg and Winona Ryder among its followers.

A native New Yorker, she was encouraged to chase her interest in acting by her parents and started studying dance at age seven. By age nine, she was taking acting classes at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, starting her acting career on the off-off-Broadway stage with roles in "Happiness", "Punk Ballet" and "Kids on Stage," even choreographing a solo dance routine. At age twelve, she made her film acting debut playing a molested child in "Dreams of Love" (1992), a short film from director Jeffrey Mueller and executive producer Milos Forman. The young actress appeared on television in a 1992 guest appearance on the NBC television crime drama series "Law & Order", playing a violent young girl who, with her mother, was involved with a sex crazed photographer. She also auditioned for "My So-Called Life" in 1992, at age thirteen, and shot the pilot in early 1993. 

She received lots of attention for her feature introduction as the ill-fated Beth in a remake of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel "Little Women" (1994), with Susan Sarandon, Kirsten Dunst, Christian Bale and Winona Ryder. Steven Spielberg hailed her as "one of the most exciting actresses to debut in ten years" and gave her a role in his Holocaust drama "Schindler's List" (1993) which she declined for a number of reasons. When "My So-Called Life" was cancelled, though, the young actor was flooded with film and movie offers.

She next appeared 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 young teen daughter of Holly Hunter in Jodie Foster's "Home for the Holidays" (1995) with Robert Downey Jr..  Foster's support helped her win the role of Juliet opposite Leonardo DiCaprio's Romeo in William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" (1996), a very stylized variation of the classic story. By the time of the films release, she had two other features waiting for release.

She had the lead role in "To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday" (1996) as the young teen daughter helping her father (Peter Gallagher) deal with the death of her mother (Michelle Pfeiffer) and "I Love You, I Love You Not" (1997) with Jude Law, as the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor (Jeanne Moreau). She received more offers for work with such respected filmmakers as Oliver Stone, who cast her as a white trash young teen princess in the unusual "U-Turn" (1997) with Billy Bob Thornton and Jennifer Lopez, and then 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 revision of "Les Miserables" (1998) featured her as Cosette. She went on to the role of a strong willed, unmarried and pregnant Polish-American next Gabriel Byrne and Lena Olin in the enchanting family story "Polish Wedding" later that year.

In 1999, she began taking on very different roles than what audiences had come to expect, starting with a part as a drug offender turned crime fighter in Scott Silver's feature update of the hit 1960s television series "The Mod Squad.” While she did well in the action genre, the film was not well received, and was a flop at the box office. Her role in "Brokedown Palace" with Kate Beckinsale also went largely unseen. The film starred the actress as the more daring and sociable of two recent high school graduates tricked into importing drugs into Thailand. Alongside Kate Beckinsale, the actress showed her skill with the edgy role, but the film would probably be best remembered for her negative comments about the Manila filming conditions, which won her few fans in the Philippines. She next lent her vocal talents to the English vocal dubbing of Hayao Miyazaki's acclaimed Japanese anime "Princess Mononoke". 

In 2002, she co-starred in the independent comedy feature "Igby Goes Down" with Ryan Phillippe, playing a young teen prep school girl caught between two considerably different brothers; and portrayed Meryl Streep's daughter Julia in "The Hours" with Nicole Kidman, before 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 hero in its war against the machines, John Conner (Nick Stahl). After filming "Stage Beauty" (2004),where she 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 tangled with a displaced actor (Billy Cruddup) who specialized in portraying women, She got her first look at tabloid celebrity when Cruddup left his pregnant girlfriend, actress Mary-Louise Parker, for a romance with her in 2003.

She returned to the screen for "Shopgirl" (2005), a variation of Steve Martin's best selling 2001 book which cast her as a dejected Beverly Hills glove salesgirl who unexpectedly finds herself chased by a pair of polar opposite lovers, a successful man and dreamer (Jason Schawartzman). She then co-starred in “The Family Stone” (2005), a romantic comedy about the oldest son (Dermot Mulroney) in a family who brings his high-powered and controlling girlfriend (Sarah Jessica Parker) home for their annual holiday gathering, as conflicting attitudes causes embarrassment, confusion and eventually hostility. In 2005, she appeared in “The Flock,” a crime thriller about a vigilant federal agent (Richard Gere) who trains his young female replacement while tracking down a missing girl he’s convinced is connected to a paroled sex offender.

She was then hired and cast in the fantasy romance film "Stardust" (2007), set in a countryside town bordering on a magical land, a young man makes a promise to his beloved that he'll retrieve a fallen star by venturing into the magical realm. Next was the romantic drama "Evening" (2007) with Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, a drama exploring the romantic past and emotional present of Ann Grant and her daughters, Constance and Nina. The actress wrapped the year with the dramatic "Me and Orson Welles" (2009) with Zac Efron, about a young teen who is cast in the Mercury Theatre production of "Julius Caesar" directed by a young Orson Welles in 1937.

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