Claire Danes's genius portrayal of Carrie Mathison means you can't think of her without thinking of Homeland. But Carrie, of course, is not her only unforgettable role. To millions of thirtysomething women who grew up watching her play Angela Chase in My So Called Life, she will always be the introspective teenage voice that echoed our own. "I feel a real loyalty to my generation," Danes said in our December cover story interview. "I think your identity is sort of set in your teenage years. And my cultural identity was set at that same time."
The cult hit resonated with young viewers who didn't see themselves represented in the lives of the pampered, perfect-looking teens in* Beverly Hills, 90210*. My So-Called Life didn't live past its first season, but Danes says fans still approach her to say that "they loved the show, that it was really meaningful to them when they were going through a bad, chaotic, murky time of being a teenager." As a former child of the '80s and teenager of the '90s who was raised on Madonna and John Hughes movies, she relates right back. "There's a big part of me that's convinced we're still living in the '90s, you know?"
To be Claire Danes in the '90s, at least for a certain stretch, meant hanging out with Winona Ryder and dating singer-songwriter Ben Lee, whom Ryder introduced to the actress. "She introduced me to his music first, and then I became sort of obsessed with him, and she flew him out as a surprise for my eighteenth-birthday party," Danes says. Not long before that, it also meant starring in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet with every teenage girl's fantasy, Leonardo DiCaprio. Did Danes have a crush, too? Dumb question: "I mean, yeah. Insofar as he was Leonardo DiCaprio," she says. "I admire him so much. He's a friend."
Go behind the scenes of Claire Danes's Allure cover shoot:
