I discovered Christopher Isherwood in college. His writing style is so direct, warm, and inclusive. – Claire Danes
People in the CIA, they marry each other. They’re like actors! We have to travel without much warning to far-flung places, and it’s very hard to communicate what our experiences are like to those in the outside world. – Claire Danes
People confuse fame with validation or love. But fame is not the reward. The reward is getting fulfillment out of doing the thing you love. – Claire Danes
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. – Claire Danes
I think it’s important to never play ‘crazy’ – you have to know what kind of crazy you’re playing. – Claire Danes
My parents never condescended to me. As a child, I always sat at the head of our dinner table. I was always given a lot of responsibility. – Claire Danes
Actors want to surprise themselves. When it’s really good, you kind of transcend yourself, and that happens infrequently. Very, very rarely. – Claire Danes
Autism does exist on a spectrum, and there are so many manifestations of it, so many kinds of expressions of it. And every case is particular. – Claire Danes
I really have never been concerned about being beautiful on-screen. That’s just not my jam. – Claire Danes
As a young performer, I didn’t know that you can have a great time playing someone in terrible crisis. The more you know it’s not real, the deeper you can go into it. And the easier it is to let it go when it’s done. – Claire Danes
My first offer was when I was 12, and it was for a soap opera. And I turned it down because I knew that I was an unformed actor, and I didn’t want to develop bad habits. – Claire Danes
It’s very difficult to judge yourself. Extreme self-doubt is only attractive when it’s fictionalized. Which is why people love the movies. They are so reassuring. – Claire Danes
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. – Claire Danes
If I took my characters home with me, half of my life would be a misery, I think. No, I tend to compartmentalize work from my life. I’m not terribly method. – Claire Danes
When you really get it right in acting, it’s an act of empathy. You feel less distant from others, and that is really exciting. – Claire Danes
I guess I stopped acting when I was 18 and didn’t pick it up again until I was 21. That wasn’t the plan, though. When I first started at Yale, the plan was to do a movie each summer. – Claire Danes
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. – Claire Danes
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. – Claire Danes
I could truly have gone through life thinking that women were these venomous creatures. Turns out, they’re not. – Claire Danes