Five Things You Don't Know About Claire Danes
She got her break in the '90s TV series My So-Called Life and then appeared in a diverse slate of movies until returning to series TV in Showtime's critically acclaimed Homeland. She's nominated for a Golden Globe and SAG Award for the series, in which she plays a CIA agent who suffers from bipolar disorder. Here are five things you probably don't know about Claire Danes.
1. Said she knew as a child that she wanted to be a performer when she saw Madonna on TV. "I understood that performing could be one's vocation and I thought, yeah!" Danes told the New York Times.
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2. Completed two years at Yale University, her father's alma mater, studying psychology. Her letter of recommendation was written by Oliver Stone, her director on the 1997 film U Turn.
3. Auditioned for the role of Lisa in 1999's Girl, Interrupted, the part that eventually went to Angelina Jolie.
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4. Was banned from the Philippines in Sept 1998 after making derogatory remarks about the country. Among her comments about the Philippine capital Manila -- where she filmed some scenes for the 1999 movie Brokedown Palace -- were that it was a "ghastly and weird city" that "smelled of cockroaches, with rats all over, and no sewerage system."
5. Both she and her husband, Hugh Dancy, have played characters living with forms of autism -- Danes in HBO's Temple Grandin (2010) and Dancy in the film Adam (2009).