Claire Catherine Danes born April 12, 1979 is an American actress, known for her role as Angela Chase in the television series "My So-Called Life", and for starring in films such as "Romeo + Julie"t and "Stardust". She has received a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy nomination for My So-Called Life, and has also worked in theater and as a voice actor.

Danes was born in Manhattan, New York City, New York. Her mother, Carla, is a day-care provider, painter, and textile designer who later served 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"; her paternal grandfather, Gibson Andrew Danes, (1910-1992 in Litchfield, Connecticut) 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. Danes attended the Dalton School in New York City, the New York City Lab School for Collaborative Studies, the Professional Performing Arts School, and the Lyce Franais de Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California.

In 1998, Danes went to Yale University, her father's alma mater. Oliver Stone wrote her letter of recommendation to Yale. After studying for two years as a psychology major, she dropped out of Yale to focus on her film career. In 1994, 15-year-old Danes starred as the 15-year-old Angela Chase in the television drama series My So-Called Life, for which she won a Golden Globe Award and received an Emmy nomination. She played Elizabeth "Beth" March in the 1994 film adaptation of Little Women. She also appeared as Holly Hunter's daughter in Home for the Holidays, which was directed by Jodie Foster.

In 1995 she appeared in a Soul Asylum music video for the song "Just Like Anyone" as an Angel. She portrayed Juliet Capulet in Baz Luhrmann's 1996 film William Shakespeare's "Romeo + Juliet", co-starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo Montague. Later that year, she was cited as having turned down the female lead role in "Titanic". Danes, however, said that while she may have been considered for the part, she was never offered the role. In 1999, she made her first appearance in an animated feature with the English version of "Princess Mononoke", and took the lead role in "Brokedown Palace", alongside Kate Beckinsale and Bill Pullman. In 2002, Danes starred alongside Susan Sarandon, Kieran Culkin, and Bill Pullman again, in "Igby Goes Down". She later co-starred as Meryl Streep's daughter in the Oscar-nominated, "The Hours", with Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, and Ed Harris. The following year, she was cast in "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines", followed by "Stage Beauty" in 2004. She earned critical acclaim in 2005 when she starred in Steve Martin's "Shopgirl" alongside Martin and Jason Schwartzman, and in "The Family Stone" opposite Sarah Jessica Parker and Diane Keaton. In 2007, Danes appeared in the fantasy "Stardust", which she described as a "classic model of romantic comedy", with Charlie Cox, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert De Niro, and Sienna Miller, and appeared in "The Flock", opposite Richard Gere. Danes appeared in Off-Broadway plays including "Happiness", "Punk Ballet", and "Kids On Stage", in which she choreographed her own solo dance.

She also wrote the introduction to Neil Gaiman's "Death: The Time of Your Life". Danes auditioned for the role of Lois Lane in Superman Returns before the role went to Kate Bosworth. In March 2007, Danes appeared with Patrick Wilson in a television commercial for Gap in which the pair dances to the song " Anything You Can Do" from the musical Annie Get Your Gun. Danes has recently appeared onstage at Manhattan's PS122 an avant-garde performance space, in a series of dance pieces by choreographer Tamar Rogoff. Danes made her stage debut at PS122 as a child. On October 19, 2007, Danes made her Broadway debut in the revival of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, starring as Eliza Doolittle. In 2010, Danes starred in the HBO production of Temple Grandin, a biopic about the eponymous autistic woman. Her portrayal has been called Emmy-worthy.

Danes had her first onscreen kiss in an episode of "My So-Called Life" before she had one in real life. After meeting at her birthday party, she and Australian singer Ben Lee dated for almost six years, their relationship ending in 2003. She also dated actor Leonardo DiCaprio, whom she met while filming "Romeo + Juliet", and they got engaged but they decided to part after 2 years. She has dated Andrew Dorff, actor Stephen Dorff's younger brother, and Matt Damon. Beginning in 2004, she dated her "Stage Beauty" and "Princess Mononoke" co-star Billy Crudup, which generated negative publicity due to rumors that their relationship caused the end of Crudup's relationship to then-pregnant Mary-Louise Parker. Both denied that they were involved prior to the end of Crudup's relationship with Parker. Danes's relationship with Crudup ended in December 2006, amid rumors of an affair by Danes with Hugh Dancy, her co-star in Evening. Danes confirmed on the June 27, 2007 episode of Late Show with David Letterman that she was dating Dancy. Danes, 30, and Dancy, 34, were married in a quiet ceremony in France in 2009.

After filming Terminator Claire would talk to her girlfriend and ask them what they thought it would be like to fuck a Terminator if they really existed. The idea of building a perfect man the way you wanted him to look with a penis of what ever size you wanted and make with the option to have it interchangeable. If one night you wanted to have a long cock fuck you and another night a short but very thick cock. possibly if you were really into it have the long thick cock that vibrated while it fucked you. The ideal of the feeling of a real man but a machine actually fucking you...you could actually program the thing to do what ever pleases you the most. Not to mention you never have to worry about pleasing the machine or having the machine quite before you were done of course unless you forgot to charge the batteries. But as long as you have it fully charged you could be good to go for a full night of nothing but having someone or something focused only doing everything you wanted! She could only imagine that she would spend days in her room with such a machine and she would get so much pleasure from it. With such a machine there would be no need for old fashion vabrators.