As the star of TV’s Homeland, CLAIRE DANES is well versed in explosive drama – but her real life couldn’t be further from it. She tells EMILY CRONIN about love, therapy and Carrie’s happily ever after.
Sitting across the table at a restaurant on New York’s Upper West Side, Claire Danes reaches for her library card – not your standard-issue version, but a limited-edition, graphic-designed card given only to members of her book club, The Litwits. “We have a library that we’ve built over time and borrow from. It’s kind of casual. You borrow a book then give your take on it, and maybe you contribute a couple of new offerings,” says Danes, then re-evaluates: “Basically, we just drink wine, eat food and gossip about boys.”
It’s a welcome distraction from a hectic schedule. For the past five years, the actress has played the role of Homeland’s Carrie Mathison, a CIA agent who, between manic episodes and periods of lithium-assisted lucidity, manages time and again to save the day. With screenwriters submitting Carrie to kidnappings, assassination attempts and Congressional inquiries, it is one of the most demanding roles on TV.
“It’s high on the list,” she says, nodding, in typical Danes-ian fashion, with her entire upper body. “I pity the person who has to play a more intense character.”
Kinetic even at rest, with corn-silk blond hair and elastic features, Danes, 36, is instantly recognizable, and as likely to furrow her brow as break out in a full-face smile. She is so aligned with the character that people meeting her for the first time can be wary, anticipating the full Carrie. Yet, as I’m learning, “Claire Danes is nothing like Carrie Mathison,” Homeland director Lesli Linka Glatter tells me later. “She is extraordinary to work with. She is fearless. She will go wherever necessary to tell the story.” It has always been so.
Throughout her award-winning career, Danes has embodied her generation’s aspirations and insecurities in a singular way. In the mid-’90s, legions of alienated girls adopted Angela Chase as their icon, Danes’ character in My So-Called Life, the TV series that captured the imagination of teenagers everywhere. Those same viewers sublimated their romantic dreams (and Leonardo DiCaprio crushes) in the actress when she played Juliet Capulet in director Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet.
“For an actor at 16 to carry the vulnerability of her age and yet be so professional and so completely dedicated was astonishing,” says Luhrmann. “I’ll never forget it.”
Danes grew up in New York’s SoHo when it was still gritty; when artists, not Victoria’s Secret stores, populated the downtown New York neighborhood. “There weren’t that many kids. There was barely a grocery store,” she recalls. Her parents, both art-school graduates, turned their vast, empty loft into a playground where Danes and older brother Asa enjoyed an upbringing as rich as it was unusual. “My mom and dad dragged me to everything – every art opening, every obscure dance performance – and I was flooded, from a very early age, with a lot of brilliant stuff,” she says. “Living in the city, you don’t get to just ride your bike and play until sundown. It’s hyper- structured and you’re always applying yourself. I think that’s why New York kids appear so precocious and advanced compared to their suburban counterparts. I liked that.”
She enrolled in acting classes at the Lee Strasberg Institute and, at the age of 14, auditioned for My So-Called Life. But it was another project that gave Danes her “whole life”. On the set of 2006’s Evening, she met British actor Hugh Dancy; the couple married in 2009.
“Marriage is wonderful. It’s challenging, and…” she searches, “it just keeps getting deeper. I keep learning more things about him and myself, and that’s not always comfortable. But I have this incredible security, and it’s a huge asset to have a partnership with someone you trust and admire – and want to make out with.”
The pair have a two-year-old son, Cyrus, who tags along to his parents’ respective sets (Danes has just wrapped Homeland in Berlin; Dancy’s new show, The Path, is filming in New York). “Cyrus has literally grown up on my lap,” says Linka Glatter. “When he’s on set, that’s where he is. He’ll sit with a headset on and watch [his mother] act. On the count of three, we shout, ‘Action!’ together.”
Danes gave birth to Cyrus a year before Carrie had Frannie, her on-screen daughter with the deceased Sergeant Nicholas Brody, played by Damian Lewis. While Carrie struggles amid postpartum depression, Danes marvels at the “insane love” that attends motherhood: “Cyrus changes daily – it’s wild, the rate of growth. I’m excited by this phase. It’s fun to see the world with him, to get his feedback on what we’re seeing.”
Critics and viewers have noted the sensitivity Danes brings to her roles, particularly when it comes to her portrayal of Carrie as a bipolar sufferer. It’s the product of research and a lifelong fascination with the mind. “I’ve always been deeply interested in psychology and how we work,” says Danes. “The more I learn about people with these kinds of conditions, the deeper my respect for them goes.”
Having been in therapy since she was six years old, Danes planned to be a therapist had acting not worked out. “I do it because it’s a helpful tool and a luxury to self-reflect and get some insight. But there have been points in my life when it was really essential,” she says matter-of-factly.
As desperate as Homeland fans are for each new episode, they are also wary of the show’s inevitable end – as is Danes. “I’m very motivated to make it as excellent and complete a series as we can. That’s the hope,” she says. “I know I’m going to feel bereft.” She is all too aware that characters like Carrie don’t come along often, let alone characters apt to yield two Emmys, two Golden Globes, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “It’s rare to find a story that is driven by a female character,” she says. “We tend to be conduits for change in the leading role, who is a man.” She is “thrilled” that equal pay is entering public discussion: “It’s not just about opportunity, it’s about financial parity.”
Danes is ready to take on a new role, she says. But more than anything, when she thinks about life after years of location hopping (as well as Berlin, Homeland has filmed in North Carolina and Tel Aviv; Hannibal, Dancy’s previous show, shot in Toronto), she is looking forward to nesting and establishing routines. That involves moving into the West Village townhouse that she and Dancy have been renovating “forever”, and play dates for Cyrus.
There is now time to reflect on what her perfect day would be: breakfast with Cyrus and Dancy, a walk to The Whitney Museum, a ramble on the High Line, a raspberry-vanilla shaved ice, a nap with Cyrus, rounded out by an evening with The Litwits.
As for Carrie, will she ever get the quiet life she thinks she wants, book club and all? “I don’t know. She’s not a quiet person,” says Danes. “But I would like a little bit of happiness for the old broad.” Season 5 of Homeland is on Showtime now
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