Claire Danes (Actor)

"As an actor, you just remove yourself from reality completely for three months, and then when it's all over, you're left with few friends who are really angry because you haven't called, and a dusty home that's been neglected. That's utterly depressing. So my goal now is to integrate my life in to my work. I try to adapt to the various changes that have occurred in my life and evolve, but it does become quite scary sometimes. Some people feel a little claustrophobic when fame hits but you have to take it as it comes. It's really important not to be afraid of people. That's too damaging.

The perks are lovely, you know. It's really great to have success and money because suddenly you have all these choices. You can say 'I'm curious about Italy, let's go there this summer.' You get an incredible amount of access to so much."---Danes on the downsides and privileges of her chosen career to Empire, December 1998.

"Claire Danes has a face of pure cream, and the heart and soul to match. At times beatific, the 16-year-old actress looks like she's lit from within. Given that she's best known as a girl named Angela on television's 'My So-Called Life', this seems more than serendipitous."---From US, May 1995.

"I am imperfect," she says, "and my features are kind of weirdly mutable and elastic. When I express emotion, it really registers. When I cry, my face really crumples, which isn't very Disneylike."---Danes to Los Angeles magazine, July 2007.

"I want to keep playing teen parts that are honest enough to say. 'Sorry, these ain't the wonder years.'"---Danes to Harper's Bazaar, July 1995.

"I've never tackled this genre before. I was craving some levity. A huge motivation for me to do the project was people's surprised reaction to my decision. They were practically appalled!"---Danes on taking a role in the action-adventure "The Mod Squad" to USA Today, April 9, 1999.

"It was just so hard. The place just fucking smelled of cockroaches. There's no sewage system in Manila, and people have nothing there. People with, like, no arms, no legs, no eyes, no teeth. We shot in a real [psychiatric] hospital, so takes would be interrupted by wailing women, like, 'Cut! Screaming person.' Rats were everywhere."---Danes' controversial comments regarding the "Brokedown Palace" Philippines location shoot to Premiere, October 1998.

"She has this incredible capacity to be beautiful and plain. She allows you to see right into her in some extraordinary way. She's not frightened to be vulnerable."---"Shopgirl" director Anand Tucker on Claire Danes to CNN.com, October 25, 2005.

"There's certainly something very uncomfortable about the voyeurism involved in being in the press, being an actor, where people have a seemingly insatiable curiosity about, you. However, I'm at a very comfortable place in my career and celebrity, in that I don't have to audition as extensively as I used to for roles but yet I'm not immediately recognizable. So I walk around, ride the subway and occasionally there's a paparazzi lurking in the shadows but it's not very injurious. I haven't been threatened in the way that has crippled me, emotionally or physically."---Danes quoted to Paul Fischer of Film Monthly, June 15, 2003

"You're always nervous before you start. No matter what your reputation, it's completely nervewracking. So I had a little breakdown before I went to Mexico City. I couldn't sleep, my heart was pounding at three in the morning. So I walked to my mother's room and tried to cuddle with her. Then I watched 'Grease 2' and that totally pacified me. You can really escape with that."---Danes relating her pre-shoot jitters for "William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet" to New York Post, October 30, 1996.

The Danes family motto is "You're not the only pebble on the beach."

Tom Shales from The Washington Post described her as "deep and mercurial and strikingly complex... "---From People, October 3, 1994.