Claire Danes gets up at 4:30 am every morning to go for a six-mile run: crazy?
I stopped watching Homeland when [redacted] died, so I have no idea if Claire Danes is still turning in award-worthy work. I assume she is – this was always a great part for her and I assume there’s a reason why Showtime keeps making the show. Claire covers the February issue of Marie Claire to promote the new season (the sixth), and while she doesn’t say anything particularly newsworthy, I still enjoyed this piece – you can read MC’s highlights here, and here’s some of it:
She gets to go to Langley every year to hang out with real spies: “It’s so wild, you have no idea. They curate a group of people who have good stories for us—experts in social media and counterterrorism and drug trafficking—and it’s just fascinating. It’s my favorite thing about the job.”
She gets up crazy early: “We’re block-shooting two episodes at once right now, which is intense,” says Danes, who rises at 4:30 a.m. to get her six-mile run in and is on set 12 to 15 hours a day, five days a week, during production.
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On Homeland: “My goal is always to do something that feels just beyond my reach, and Homeland continues to do that. Every season, they find new ways to scare me. The show is like a diamond that fell from the sky. I’ll always feel slightly bludgeoned by it, but in the best way possible.”
On holding out for meaningful parts, which meant not working for two years: “It was a nightmare. I was in such agony. I had been so stimulated and energized, and I felt really robust and capable and eager. But I couldn’t go back to the ingénue role or the limited secretary-type roles. I wanted to play someone who would move the story forward.”
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On meeting her husband Hugh Dancy and falling in love: “I was very recently single, and I had never been single before, so we were just friends for a while. [Hugh and I] met in Rhode Island when it was at its most audaciously beautiful, in the fall. And there was one day when we were bicycling by the water and it was sparkly and idyllic, and I just had this dumb epiphany, like, I’m really just happy.”On realizing acting was her passion and pursuing it: “My parents really empathized with our desire to express ourselves and I was so forceful and sure and annoying about it. I really insisted.”
[From Marie Claire]
I always like when she talks about Hugh Dancy, her husband, because I always get a weird vibe from them and it’s nice to know that they’re actually solid in real life. I think Hugh might just be uncomfortable on the red carpet or something, or maybe he’s just not a very demonstrative person, because whenever I see them together, I always think, “Yikes, they’re going to announce their divorce soon.”
As for the getting-up-at-4:30-to-run thing… that’s crazy. I’ve started getting up earlier and earlier too, but that’s so I can work… and then go to the gym in the afternoon. As I get older, I’ve had some epiphanies about all of this: one, I am a morning person not a night owl; and two, I admire the hell out of dedicated runners. I wish I had been more into running now, at my age. Getting up at 4:30 am to go on a six-mile run and then working a twelve-hour day sounds insane.
Photos courtesy of Txema Yeste/Marie Claire.
