Claire Catherine Danes (born April 12, 1979) is a
Golden Globe Award-winning and
Emmy Award-nominated American
film,
television, and
theater actress most known for the
television series
My So-Called Life and the films
Romeo + Juliet,
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,
Stardust, and
Princess Mononoke.
Early life
Danes was born in
Manhattan, New York City. Her mother, Carla, is a
day-care provider, painter, and
textile designer who would later serve as her daughter's manager, and her father, Christopher Danes, is a computer consultant and former
architectural photographer. Danes has described her background as being "as
WASPy as you can get";
[Movieline - December 1995] her paternal grandfather, Gibson A. Danes, was the
dean of the art and architecture school at
Yale University.
She has an older brother,
Asa, who graduated from
Oberlin College and works as a litigation attorney for the law firm of
Paul Hastings.
