Claire Danes Online

Quotes

Claire’s Personal Quotes:

“I have a huge, active imagination, [and] I think I’m really scared of being alone; because if I’m left to my own devices, I’ll just turn into a madwoman.”

“You don’t realize how useful a therapist is until you see yourself one and discover you have more problems than you ever dreamed of.”

“Money is only irrelevant if you have it,”

“The life of my persona has nothing to do with me,”

“It’s not easy. Many, many, many songs have been written about it. We wouldn’t have anything to read if relationships were easy. There would be
no art in the world if we actually got along.”

“It’s so ironic that I’ll forever be associated with that time because I hated being a teenager, … I felt under siege. It was an enormous gift to be given those insightful, powerful words. I felt I was taking a megaphone and roaring, ‘It’s awful.’ It was very cathartic.”

“The age difference seemed a little awkward, … but the movie is about that.”

“All the partner-swapping and reversals are farcical and a little Shakespearean, … I play the straight man while everyone else is so eccentric.”

“I became very successful at a young age, … I had lots of opportunities and lots of power and had no idea how to focus it.”

“I think they’re both inward-looking. That’s the most obvious parallel between the two,”

“That’s pretty easy for me to play, I guess.”

“It’s just as weird doing it with Steve as it is doing it with somebody my own age. You’re not supposed to be kissing somebody who’s not your boyfriend. You’re just not. I don’t know when I’ll become more comfortable with it. You have to depersonalize it.”

“I was really tired of that, so this opportunity landed on my lap. I was cast literally the day before I started working,”

“In a way, that’s really reassuring. I’m not just a very limited person to not have figured it out at this point. But it’s also intimidating. Well, how long is it going to take before you can have a good time?”

“He’s an incredibly dynamic person. I don’t know if the general public is so conscious of that. He’s a skillful, celebrated writer. He also collects art in earnest, and he’s also an incredible musician. You should hear him play the ukulele. It’s ridiculous what he’s capable of.”

“I was dying to do that, to work with Jodie again.”

“With acting there are a lot more choices, … With this, I either stick it or I don’t. There’s something really unforgiving about that.”

“I really appreciate her focus and discipline, … This industry is very powerful and overwhelming and intimidating. She knows it and has created
her own culture within it. And that integrity. She’s got it.”

“She makes her own rules, … She’s consistent, and she follows those rules about life and work. And she’s quite cheeky.”

“All I will say is that we work very well together.”

“They look really beautiful,”

“It was such a thrill to work with Jason. I want to do it many, many, many times again. He’s so modest and silly. I was just following him. We always talk about how it’s so important to be in the moment, and I just feel like I didn’t have a choice because what he was doing was so compelling and surprising. He kept me really engaged.”

“It was a challenge for me to play somebody who was so quiet and receding and depressed because she’s also on screen all the time, and she has to remain compelling and entertaining. I was really nervous that people were not going to stay with me while I was just staying behind that bloody
counter.”

“I used to talk about my personal life all the time. It’s the most fun thing to talk about, … the people in my life are hurt.”

“I’ve never dated (casually). Ever. It’s kind of weird. I did have a boyfriend in junior high who was a kleptomaniac. We’d leave stores and he’d come out with something for me.”

“I’m totally going through a rebel period right now. It’s sort of waning, but … ach, I’m allowed, right? It’s OK, right?”

“This is Steve’s personal story — it’s based on his actual relationship, … We both have kind of slight frames, and I have dark hair in the movie like hers.”

“Martin knew the story very well. He internalized it years ago when he wrote the novella,”

“It was uncomfortable, I have to say, but I did think that it was relevant and useful, … Also, it’s erotic. There’s no reason to pussyfoot around that. I thought it was vital, so I stripped.”

“I played a girl. There’s really nothing controversial about her. She’s just fine. She has to be fine in order to make Sarah Jessica’s character pop, … I say I just play a white girl in that movie.”

“[When she initially read the script, Danes was amazed that Martin, a 30-year show-business veteran, could so clearly recall the particulars
of his salad days.] Steve was great in establishing those details, … He’s
really exact, even with the numbers. We learned how much [Mirabelle] owes, exactly, and what she has to pay off, and you know she has $4 every day to buy her sandwich. This seemingly petty stuff can really impact a person’s experience.”

“I think Jeremy wants things, and I think that’s a great moment when (Mirabelle) says, ‘You should just do it,’ … I think she just harnesses it or funnels it into some sort of point, and all of a sudden he has a goal. But I think at the beginning it’s just a frustration and a desire to do things, but
he doesn’t really know how to do them, and that’s what sets him off on believing you can make the things that you don’t see happen. I think he has ambition; I don’t think he’s familiar with how that feels.”

Acting is the greatest answer to my loneliness that I have found.

But I don’t know if people are meant to be together. You have to have a lot in common, choose well and be really fortunate. It’s not like you’re sprinkled with fairy dust. You have to believe that love will be there when you need it.

Fame doesn’t end loneliness.

Growing up, I wanted desperately to please, to be a good girl.

However, I’m at a very comfortable place in my career and celebrity, in that I don’t have to audition as extensively as I used to for roles but yet I’m not immediately recognizable.

I finally realized that yeah I did want to be an actor and it wasn’t out of habit, but I needed to grow up for myself and then kind of re-enter the industry with a sound understanding of what my sensibilities and my values are as a relatively formed human being.

I get a little jealous of these actor boys. They walk into a club, and in two seconds flat there are swarms of girls who are wanting so badly to touch them or just say hello. That’s not the case with me, or any other girl I know.

I hadn’t been free from adult responsibilities since I was 12, and I needed to experience that. I really needed to just be a kid again.

I have this home in New York, I have a long-term relationship with my boyfriend, who’s from Australia, and I had this business that I had maintain. Even though I wasn’t actively shooting, there’s a lot of peripheral work.

I know, it’s true. I’ve played these tortured teenagers. I can’t wait to shed that image.

I really liked Yale, although it was extremely intimidating. When I visited the campus, I was hiding behind trees, I felt so unworthy.

I think because I am as earnest as I am, people were accepting of my evolving into a certified, legitimate, and grown up and I did take three years off.

I took three years off. I differentiated myself from the industry. Found my identity – sort of… I haven’t graduated yet. I’m not legitimately educated yet, but maybe one day.

I would sign on for projects that were meant to shoot in July, and then they would postponed and they would bleed into the following semester, and then I’d take a semester off, and then the movie would collapse.

I’m only realizing now that I was a child actress because I always took myself so seriously.

Maybe philosophy – I love talking about ideas. Or maybe art history. I was thinking about psychology, then I got really afraid because everybody says it’s terribly boring.

My character was kidnapped by the Terminator and I was kidnapped by the Terminator production.

There’s certainly something very uncomfortable about the voyeurism involved in being in the press, being an actor, where people have a seemingly insatiable curiosity about, you.

What I needed was a connection to life that was real and lasting.

When I was 18 I went to college for two years and didn’t work for a year which was essential for me, because my identity had been so influenced by my being an actor and I think I just needed to discover what it was to be myself, divorced from all that responsibility.

Yeah, there was the Flora Plum thing, where I trained for about a month and I had taken a semester off for that, and two weeks prior to filming, the financing collapsed.

You know, let a few years go by until I hit my midlife crisis. Then that can be documented on film.

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