Happy Birthday Suit: Claire Danes

Danes Thawed Out

Claire Danes made a big splash on TV in 1994 as Angela Chase in My So Called Life.  There were exactly 19 episodes?  How do I know this?  I watched them over and over again when MTV reaired them after ABC canceled the series.  You could say that their counter-programming efforts to CBS' 60 Minutes failed.  Perhaps that should have aimed younger, as I seem to recall the NBC youth-oriented comedy hour of Silver Spoons/Punky Brewster from 7 - 8 PM on Sunday nights lasted for four or so seasons (I watched A LOT of TV in my day; now, how proud I am of being able to recall such details is for entirely different discussion ... with my shrink.)  Whatever the case, it won Danes a Golden Globe at age 15 or so and made her a star.  Today she turns 33 and enters her Jesus year.  Hallelujah!

She quickly left the small screen behind and hitched her star to a couple of Winona Ryder vehicles.  In a short amount of time she would be starring opposite Leonardo Dicaprio in the highest grossing film based on a single Shakespeare play in Romeo + Juliet.  The "+" sign is so youthful and bad-ass, no?  It's like, "Screw the ampersand (&), this is no classic Elizabethan retelling!"  She'd turn down the opportunity to act with Dicaprio again no more than one year later in the highest grossing film of all time, Titanic.  Instead, she would go her own way, and appear in a bunch of crappy films, some she'd headline, others not.  Some had bigger budgets, but what they all had in common is that they all sucked and hardly anyone saw them.

Oh, Claire, it's just one breast; get over it

She tried college and came back a few years later with a different game plan.  She scored a small role in prestige project The Hours playing a grown-up Angela Chase-type and tried to gain some exposure by joining the now tarnished Terminator franchise.  She also endeavored more adult roles in such films as Shopgirl and delivered perhaps her finest performance to date in Stage Beauty, where she played an aspiring actress during the Elizabethan period when men began to stop playing the female roles and relented them to women (what a novel idea!).  The film also addresses themes pertaining to gender identity and politics.  While controversial and sometimes frustrating, it's an invigorating watch and I highly recommend it.  She plays opposite her then lover Billy Crudup (who left his pregnant girlfriend Mary Louise-Parker for her).  He ended up breaking it off with Danes a few years later and his career has taken a swan dive into a pile of turd ever since.  Talk about Almost Famous.

Anyhow, Danes used to come across as an icy bitch, even more so than Gwyneth Paltrow.  She's so far up her butt in her craft, that she came across as not getting it for a while, much the way Paltrow has.  Paltrow has since learned to have a bit of a sense of humor (but hasn't really changed).  I haven't watched Danes in interviews lately.  But, she makes me think of Jennifer Lawrence, who, it's clear doesn't care to do interviews.  However, in comparison, Lawrence strikes me as pretty well integrated in society and down-to-earth.  And, when she is promoting her films, she has a good time and makes a go of it.

Danes hasn't had much luck since on film, but the more recent end of her filmography is much more respectable than the mid-portion.  And, wouldn't you know it, she has returned to television and the former glory she once experienced as an actress during her So Called days.  In the last two years, she has won two more Golden Globes and an Emmy for her work on Temple Grandin and the TV show Homeland.  By embracing the medium that made her a star, she finally found her stride.  (I guess she could only wait to do that perpetually-in-pre-production Jodie Foster circus movie for so long.)  Ah humility.  One of her movie moms Holly Hunter took much less time learning that lesson.

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