COVER STORY
Claire Danes on family life, what being a teen star was like and bidding farewell to Homeland
After nearly a decade of playing the role of CIA agent Carrie Mathison, Homeland star Claire Danes bid farewell to both the character and the Emmy Award-winning show when it wrapped earlier this year. She reflects on her time as Carrie, being a teen star and family life.
my So-Called Life ran for only one season, but the 1994 teen drama series has become something of a cult classic. At least part of its success can be attributed to its stars: a then-14year-old Claire Danes, sporting a bright red lob (long bob), and Thirty Seconds to Mars frontman Jared Leto, nearly unrecognisable as a broody teen. The role of Angela Chase kickstarted Claire’s career, earning her both a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy nomination. Being a teen actor, she says, came with a unique set of benefits and challenges.
‘Adolescence is a difficult time, full stop,’ says Claire. ‘I was struggling emotionally with that reality, which is why I think I ran into acting. I had a hard time at junior high school and was bullied. I hated the social dynamics. I got to reflect on that in such an incredible way with My So-Called Life .Then I was kind of buffered from the actual experience of it because I was suddenly in a world full of adults who were much more humane.’
By the time she was 16, Claire was a household name, thanks to her portrayal of Juliet opposite Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo in Baz Luhrmann’s modern-day interpretation of Romeo and Juliet (1996). Even now, being an instantly recognisable face is something she’s slightly uncomfortable with. ‘Fame is funny,’ she says. ‘It always makes me squeamish talking about it. It just feels inherently embarrassing.’
After filming 13 movies over a five-year period, the actress decided to take a break from her gruelling schedule and enrolled at Yale University. ‘I wanted to try to socialise myself because I was starting to feel a bit strange, a little on the fringe of my generation, my contemporaries; I was a problem,’ she says jokingly. She stayed for two years before dropping out, but insists it wasn’t a waste of time. ‘Going to university taught me how to think in an analytical way, how to basically read and write, and I wasn’t a freak any more. Plus I knew how to hang!’
The daughter of a photographer and a textile designer, Claire spent most of her early years surrounded by art. Living in the bohemian hub of Soho in New York, it was almost written in the stars that her life would take an artistic direction – but on her own terms. ‘In Soho during the ’70s and ’80s you had to prove that you were an artist to live there. So it was like a little commune; it was a real gathering of a certain kind of mind,’ she says. ‘But [acting] was totally my idea. From the age of five I was really clear that this was the thing I wanted to do.’
In 2011 she stepped into one of her most challenging roles yet: that of Agent Carrie Mathison, a gifted
‘I’ll miss Carrie and I will have to do a bit of grieving. We made our family over the course of the show. I started the show as a barely married person, and I’m leaving it as a mother of two.’
CIA operative who also struggles with bipolar disorder. ‘I was really daunted when the prospect of doing the show first came up,’ she says. ‘I thought I would have to carry so much misery – how could that not bleed into my own life? Did I want to forfeit my happiness? But actually, I was able to compartmentalise way more than I had feared. And Carrie tends to win, which makes it more tolerable. She’s smarter than everyone and she never gets punished for that, or if she does, she eventually prevails. When is that the case in a TV show or a movie? It’s so rare to have the chance to do so much.’
Homeland was shot in several countries including Morocco, Hungary, Germany, Israel, even South Africa, and has won Claire two Emmys and two Golden Globes. Her lifestyle, she says, has been a non-stop combination of filming, training, researching and travelling.
The cast of Homeland regularly attended what they called ‘spy camp’ in Washington, DC, where they spent intensive periods interviewing CIA agents, journalists and political figures to help guide realistic storylines within the show.
‘It’s also really nice to have played characters that have been culturally significant,’ says Claire about the show. ‘It gives me more confidence that I’ll be allowed to play someone else, that the public has the elasticity in their imagination for me to go on some other adventure.’
These days she’s enjoying home life and spending time with her family in one place. Claire and her husband – fellow actor Hugh Dancy, who you might remember as foreign policy advisor John Zabel in Homeland – have two sons, Rowan and Cyrus, and live a few blocks away from her childhood home in New York. She continued filming Homeland during both her pregnancies.
‘I had to film when I was ill and exhausted, and I couldn’t tell anyone,’ she says. ‘I kept falling asleep between takes and getting really paranoid that everyone might think I had some kind of substance abuse problem. I just wanted to tell people: “There is a reason for this that isn’t criminal!”’
Claire turned 40 last year and is really excited about the upcoming decade, which she thinks could be her best yet. ‘You go through these various neuroses. You think, “I’m not enough; I’m too big; I’m too small; maybe if I just eat almonds for 10 days I’ll be saved.” You cycle through all that absurdity and realise, maybe I should eat when I’m hungry and take pleasure in things. That’s the nice thing about being this age. You accept the fact of yourself.’
As for her beloved character, she says, ‘I’ll miss Carrie and I will have to do a bit of grieving. We made our family over the course of the show – I have so many ridiculous photos of Cyrus in CIA stations, playing with the blinking lights and pressing buttons to send some drone out. I started the show as a barely married person, and I’m leaving the show as a mother of two.
We just celebrated our 10-year wedding anniversary. It’s going to be a while before I can understand and appreciate what this all meant to me. More than anything, I’m filled with gratitude.’