She has two dozen film credits to her name, but Claire Danes’ role in the fantasy “Stardust” was unlike any previous part on her resume.
In the film, recently released on DVD, she plays a fallen star — and not in the figurative sense. She portrays an actual celestial being who is knocked from the heavens and crashes down in the magical land of Stormhold.
“It’s pretty fun. Yeah, I mean, the 6-year-old within is very pleased about it,” Danes said in during interviews last summer at the Four Seasons Hotel. “It just fulfilled all of my fantasies, my little-girl fantasies.”
The movie, based on the illustrated novel by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess, centers on Tristan Thorne (Charlie Cox), a nerdy young Englishman living in the Victorian village of Wall. He promises the girl of his dreams, snobby village beauty Victoria (Sienna Miller), that he will cross into Stormhold and bring her back a fallen star. If he succeeds, she will marry him.
When Tristan reaches the star’s landing place, he doesn’t find the hunk of rock he expected. Instead, he finds Yvaine (Danes), a lovely young woman with a hurt leg and prickly attitude.
Tristan vows to help Yvaine return to her heavenly home if she will help fulfill his promise to Victoria. As Yvaine unwillingly travels with him, she is pursued by an ancient witch (Michelle Pfeiffer), a ruthless prince (Mark Strong) and other undesirable characters who want to seize the fallen star’s magical powers.
The movie comes with all sorts of fantasy trappings — from magic mirrors and enchanted jewels to flying ships and daring pirates — but Danes said at its heart, “Stardust” is a romantic comedy. Although they initially despise each other, Yvaine and Tristan find themselves falling in love on their journey.
“I think that’s a pretty classic scenario. It like, you know, harks back to those screwball comedies of the ‘30s. They’re always antagonizing each other before they realize that, oh, actually they’re just desperately in love,” she said with a grin. “It’s just very amusing ... it’s a great source of comedy.”
Dressed in a pleated peach and silver dress with her golden hair spilling over her shoulders, Danes, 28, radiated the poise of a mature actress. But her wide gray-green eyes and crooked smile are reminders of the teenager who charmed critics and audiences as awkward adolescent Angela Chase on the TV drama “My So-Called Life.”
She won a Golden Globe for her work on the show, which led to a diverse film career, including roles in Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of “Romeo+Juliet,” the action sequel “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” and the love-triangle drama “Shopgirl.”
The movie business can be “wacky,” but the native New Yorker said her passion for acting has sustained her through challenging times. Besides sometimes having her life splashed all over the tabloids, Danes said actors put in long, strange hours, and these days, the work often takes place in foreign countries, far away from family and friends.
She won a Golden Globe for her work on the show, which led to a diverse film career, including roles in Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of “Romeo+Juliet,” the action sequel “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” and the love-triangle drama “Shopgirl.”
The movie business can be “wacky,” but the native New Yorker said her passion for acting has sustained her through challenging times. Besides sometimes having her life splashed all over the tabloids, Danes said actors put in long, strange hours, and these days, the work often takes place in foreign countries, far away from family and friends.
“I do love acting, and that is what I always return to when I’m at the mercy of the erraticism of the business,” she said. “Being aware of people’s opinions of my work and myself can be disconcerting and undermining at times, but basically ... that never interferes with my enjoyment of acting, and so you know, I’m OK basically.”
Taking a two-year break from the business to study at Yale University also helped her define herself outside of the entertainment industry.
Still, Danes said she has no plans to change careers, despite the stresses of the job.
“I get to exercise my imagination and my sense of empathy. And I get to meet really creative, talented people, passionate people, and I get to travel extensively. I get to see the world,” she said."
Part of what drew her to “Stardust” was the opportunity to play a part in Gaiman’s imaginative story. She voiced a character in the 1997 English version of the animated movie “Princess Mononoke,” for which the “Sandman” scribe wrote the screenplay. She also penned the foreword to Gaiman’s graphic novel “Death.”
Although Yvaine is in many ways a classic “damsel in distress” — and the role demanded the usual screaming — Danes said Gaiman gave the character strength.
“I thought she was written so beautifully, and she’s, you know, allowed to be really smart and self-possessed and daring,” she said. “She’s a force to be reckoned with. She knows her significance and her power, and she’s not embarrassed by it and she’s not ... apologetic about it, which I think a lot of women are. So I think she wasn’t a classic damsel in distress in that sense.
A fan of dark fairy tales like “Bluebeard,” Danes said she would love to round out her filmography by portraying a strong female baddiePictures from the "Behinds The Scenes"and Official trailer Of Stardust.
| Full name: | Claire Catherine Danes |
| Date of birth: | April 12, 1979 |
| Place of birth: | New York City, NY, USA |
| Height: | 5'5½" / 1,68m |
| Eyes: | hazel / gray / green |
| Hair: | dark blond |
| Family: | father: Chris Danes, computer consultant, born in 1944 mother: Carla Danes, teacher and painter, born in 1945 brother: Asa Danes, laywer, born in 1973 |
| Place of residence: | 1979-1994: SoHo, NY, with her parents 1994-1999: Santa Monica, with her parents since 1999: a loft in NY (purchase price around $1,000,000) |
| Salary: | The Mod Squad (1999): $2,000,000 Terminator 3 (2003): $5,000,000 |
| Interests: | psychology, modern dance, gymnastics, surfing |
| Education: | Lee Strasberg Theater Institute, NY Professional Performing Arts School, NY Dalton High School, NY Le Lycée Francais, LA Yale University |
| Pets: | cat called Fifi-Champion poodle called Ouija |
| Favourite designers: | Zac Posen, Narciso Rodiguez, Alexander McQueen |
| Favourite movies: | Footloose, Fargo, The Breakfast Club |
| Role of her dreams: | in a dance-movie like Footloose |
| Significant others: | 1995-1996: Andrew Dorff 1997-2003: Ben Lee 2003-2006: Billy Crudup 2007-present: Hugh Dancy |
Pygmalion (1913) is a play by George Bernard Shaw based on Ovid's tale of Pygmalion. It tells the story of Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics (based on phonetician Daniel Jones), who makes a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering that he can successfully pass off a Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, as a refined society lady by teaching her how to speak with an upper class accent and training her in etiquette. In the process, Higgins and Doolittle grow close, but she ultimately rejects his domineering ways and declares she will marry Freddy Eynsford-Hill – a young, poor, gentleman.
Shaw wrote the lead role of Eliza Doolittle for Mrs Patrick Campbell (though at 49 she was considered by some to be too old for the part). Due to delays in mounting a London production and Campbell's injury in a car accident, the first English presentation did not take place until some time after Pygmalion premiered at the Hofburg Theater in Vienna on October 16, 1913, in a German translation by Shaw. The first production in English finally opened at His Majesty's Theatre, London on April 11, 1914 and starred Mrs Patrick Campbell as Eliza and Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree as Henry Higgins; it was directed by Shaw himself.
The Pygmalion myth was a popular subject for Victorian era English playwrights, including one of Shaw's influences, W. S. Gilbert, who wrote a successful play based on the the story in 1871, called Pygmalion and Galatea. Shaw also would have been familiar with the burlesque version, Galatea, or Pygmalion Reversed.
Claire Danes and British boyfriend Hugh Dancy hold hands while taking a romantic stroll through SoHo on Friday afternoon, October 27th, 2007.
Danes, 28, and Dancy, 32, left the gym together, then stopped in the Mercer Kitchen for a quick lunch before returning to Danes’s apartment.
Starting on September, Danes made her linguistically-challenging Broadway debut in the revival of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion starring as Eliza Doolittle. Her character is a Cockney flower girl who must pass off as a refined society lady by learning how to speak with an upper class accent and train in etiquette.
There’s a NSFW interview with Hugh Dancy about his movie The Jane Austen Book Club.
Whoever says romance is dead hasn't met Hugh Dancy. A spy spotted the Ella Enchanted star wooing his lady, Claire Danes, by showing off some smooth moves while dancing to Rihanna's hit Umbrella at -- of all places -- the gym.
"Hugh interrupted Claire from on the treadmill to do a dance where he pretended to hold an umbrella, kind of like Mary Poppins," a source told OK! magazine.
According to the source, the actress seemed to enjoy the show and "giggled like a schoolgirl."
"A collection first has to make me feel good," says Som. Actress Claire Danes in a Peter Som original.
Trust us, finding a happy moment in fashion is not easy--nor is it all that easy to find time for.
"I've always wanted to make the beautiful things that come into my head," says Som. "What you don't realize when you're merely thinking of being a designer is that it's only going to be one eighth of what you do. There's so much marketing and finance involved. Getting that dress of your dreams on your girl means you have to build a machine to get it to her."
