Claire Danes Biography

Claire Danes is an enduring star of the big and small screen, now perhaps best known for her role as a CIA counter-terrorism expert in the TV drama Homeland.

Claire Danes grew up in Manhattan and began acting as a child. She first made a splash as the teen heroine of My So-Called Life, a 1990s TV homage to high school angst. The show lasted for only 19 episodes in 1994-95, but became a cult favorite nonetheless. She jumped successfully to the big screen in 1997’s Romeo and Juliet, playing Juliet to Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Romeo.

Danes became regular on TV and in the movies, often in supporting roles in films like John Grisham‘s The Rainmaker (1997, starring Matt Damon), Igby Goes Down (2002), The Hours (2002, starring Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman) and Me and Orson Welles (2009, with Zac Efron). Her other films include Oliver Stone‘s U Turn (1997, with Sean Penn), Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines (2003, with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Steve Martin‘s Shopgirl (2005). She won a 2010 Emmy Award for playing real-life autistic professor Temple Grandin in the HBO movie Temple Grandin.

In 2011, she began playing Carrie Mathison, a bipolar CIA terror expert wrapped up in ongoing espionage dramas, in the TV drama Homeland.  The show launched in 2011; Danes won Emmy Awards in 2012 and 2013 as outstanding leading actress in a drama series.