Actor / Director Profile

New Yorker Claire Danes is the youngest daughter of Carla, a day-care provider and artist and Christopher, a computer consultant and photographer. She has an older brother called Asa. She was educated at Dalton School, New York, The New York City Lab School for Collaborative Studies, The Professional Performing Arts School and Lycée Français de Los Angeles. From 1998 she attended Yale University, studying psychology, but dropped out after two years to concentrate on her acting career.Danes first came to major public attention when she appeared as Angela Chase in "My So-Called Life". She won an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe award for this performance. A successful film career followed including the role of Juliet opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996). After making Brokedown Palace (1999), Danes took a break from her acting career to complete her education at Yale. She returned to the screen in 2002 and continued acting in such varied project as The Hours (2002), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) and Stardust (2007).In 2010 she appeared in the HBO Production "Temple Grandin", playing the title character. She received huge critical acclaim for the role, and won an Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance.