Cass BirdClaire Danes, who now stars in the Emmy-nominated Showtime drama "Homeland," admits in a new interview with T, the style magazine of The New York Times, that some of her earlier work wasn't the most challenging. After she became famous on the '90s drama "My So-Called Life," her credits included movies like Baz Luhrmann's "Romeo + Juliet," Steve Martin's "Shopgirl," and "Evening" with Meryl Streep. Then in 2010, she won an Emmy for playing the autistic title character in HBO movie "Temple Grandin." After that, she didn't work for about two years — that's a long time in Hollywood! — partly because she couldn't find a role that she wanted. "I didn't want to go back to ingenues," she explains. "Because I ingenued the hell out of it for a while." She's nominated for an Emmy again this year for her role as a CIA agent in "Homeland," a show she signed on to do for up to seven years.
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Cass Bird
Cass Bird
"Homeland" has been very successful … and has only made Danes more famous. Still, she says that she's always been afraid of being "imprisoned by fame," and that she feels sorry for more paparazzi-plagued celebrities. "I cannot imagine what it would be like to be Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Aniston," she shares. "I was watching a documentary about Britney Spears, and what she has to cope with really shook me." Danes herself was regular tabloid fodder in 2003 when she had a romance with her "Stage Beauty" co-star Billy Crudup, who split with his seven-months pregnant girlfriend, actress Mary-Louise Parker. Nine years later, Danes says her life with hubby of three years Hugh Dancy is "too predictable" for anyone to want to read about it.
Cass Bird
However, that life promises to be more interesting as she and Dancy are expecting their first child. Danes revealed her pregnancy in July, after the T magazine interview was conducted, but she does talk a little about the actresses she respects for the way they balance work and family, such as Streep and her "Home for the Holidays" director Jodie Foster. "I admired them as much for the way they lived as for their thrilling careers," Danes notes. "They have rich lives and families. They are in the world. Not bonkers — that's a massive achievement. I would rather not work than be a neurotic mess." The Emmy nominee also reveals that she's unsure about how she'll handle it all. "We will have to figure out how to do that," she says. "I went to high school and acted at the same time. So I do have some experience of doing two things simultaneously."
Somehow, we don't think that's exactly the same thing. Do you think Danes will make a good mom?
Read the full interview with Danes in the latest issue of T magazine.
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