Claire Danes has a limited edition, graphic designed library card to an exclusive library used only by her Book Club, The Nitwits, and now *I* want a limited edition, graphic designed library card to an exclusive library. And possibly access to her book club, but I’ll need to see their reading list first; they do drink and that is a step in the right direction.
Claire is featured in the The Edit, Net-a-Porter’s magazine. The pictorial is pretty; with a lot of Boho Chic florals, lace and peasant-style (and one seriously fierce grey long coat that she needs to hand over to me when she delivers my library card). The beige, floral-ombre Topshop dress shown below is lovely – the colors really complement her. Claire is known for early roles like Juliet to Leonardo “My Bear” DiCaprio’s Romeo and teenager Angela in My So Called Life. For the last five years, of course, Claire has headlined Showtimes’ Homeland as CIA agent Carrie Mathison. Her character is bipolar; a trait not often written in to leading characters and its been noted how delicately Claire has handled it. Dealing with challenges through therapy is something Claire has been preparing for almost her whole life:
She has been in therapy since she was 6 years old:
“I’ve always been deeply interested in psychology and how we work… I do it because it’s a helpful tool and a luxury to self-reflect and get some insight. But there have been points in my life when it was really essential,”She appreciated her SoHo upbringing:
“Living in the city, you don’t get to just ride your bike and play until sundown. It’s hyper-structured and you’re always applying yourself. I think that’s why New York kids appear so precocious and advanced compared to their suburban counterparts. I liked that.”She loves being married to husband Hugh Dancy:
“… I keep learning more things about him and myself, and that’s not always comfortable. But I have this incredible security, and it’s a huge asset to have a partnership with someone you trust and admire – and want to make out with.”
Unlike Claire, the list of people I trust and admire and want to make out with is staggering. I hope most of them are flexible on the whole “partnership” thing because we haven’t met and the restraining orders seem to speak to their reticence to “partnership.”
Claire being in therapy since she was six intrigues me; that seems pretty young for elective therapy. I can’t imagine a six year-old being prescient enough to know she was going to keep therapist as her back up plan to acting. I get why she stays in therapy, I have nothing but love for therapy and I am glad it helped her to portray Carrie with such sensitivity.
In the rest of the article she talks about her son Cyrus, her feelings about being in a female-led show and her plans to finally finish her townhome. It’s a nice read and the pictures are graceful. I leave it here for you while I go get one of my progeny to make me a cool library card.
I find it difficult to wrap my head around the idea of continuous, ongoing therapy. If the purpose is self awareness and coping tools, shouldn’t you eventually learn the mechanisms and no longer need therapy? Anyway, she sounds happy, well adjusted and sane, so it’s obviously working.
I kinda feel the same way. I understand people sometimes go back for a short while; I was in therapy for two years, went solo for three, back for 6 months, and solo again. I went back because life had given me some unexpected tragedies and I needed help coping, but eventually I had the tools in place and was able to keep going.
But I feel like 20+ years of continuous therapy is…enabling.
That’s how it’s supposed to work. I go when I need to and then it’s pretty obvious when I can back off because we run out of things to talk about or we start to rehash the same things. I guess Claire and her therapist have a deep well of topics!
I wonder if she discussed dating a man with a pregnant girlfriend with her therapist?
Ooh, first thing I thought too !
Probably? I’m sure it was a stressful time.
Ooooohhhh…. BURN!
Winner of the most boring, predictable comment award.
It’s funny how Kristen Stewart humping a married father of two in public had people running to defend her, going “she’s young!” and all other manner of excuses and hardly anyone brings it up now, just three years later.
But with Claire Danes, THIRTEEN years later and well after she’s obviously moved on and matured, people are still bent on dragging her for the bad dating decisions of her youth.
@funcakes: That was probably her break away period, as commenters on here have said that it isn’t necessarily always a continuous thing.
I was wondering how someone could be in therapy from the age of 6 through adulthood. Seems so strange and so sad for a 6 year old to be in therapy.
I heard her on a podcast (WTF maybe) and she’s soooo self-involved. I think her parents sent her to therapy bc that’s the lazy NYC way of parenting, sadly. She came across as someone who thinks they are more interesting than they really are.
I grew up in NYC suburbs and ended up in a Manhattan HS. I felt sorry for the city kids. They don’t really have a fun outdoor childhood so they create angst or issues or weird habits that aren’t really character traits but they don’t really have well formed personalities or selves.
Are you trolling or just grossly over-generalizing? I feel sorry for you; you clearly do not have an open mind and are ready to quickly judge people who do not have the same upbringing as you.
I grew up in Manhattan and what you describe would have applied to kids few and far between. I now teach in a high school in a NYC suburb and the same issues you mention seem to me to be MUCH more prevalent for young folks there than in Manhattan when I was growing up.
I grew up in NYC and rode my bike and played till sundown. Plenty of suburban kids are kept structured. Maybe it depends on a few other things.
EXACTLY!! WTF? That comment really irritated me.
“It’s hyper-structured and you’re always applying yourself. I think that’s why New York kids appear so precocious and advanced compared to their suburban counterparts”
What, because people in the suburbs don’t apply themselves? Only people in the city have brains or something? BI**CH please. I have dirty socks that apply themselves more than you do – have you ever watched yourself on TV?
Ok rant over. I really don’t like her.
LOL! I really don’t care for her, either.
Same here. She’s so pretentious and self-important. When unread that she has a kid, my heart sank. I hope she is a good parent at least.
She sounds like an absolute twit.
Yeah, that comment really bugged me too, the broad generalization of city vs suburbs. I feel like city people sometimes bend over backwards to justify keeping their kids in the city (“diversity is important to us” is a big one) because they are afraid of being seen as sell-outs to suburbia.
We moved from the city and the suburbs as my kids neared middle school and it’s been interesting to see how my kids’ city friends have turned out. I can generally say there have been more drug related problems with the city kids than in our particular suburban neighborhood, which kinda bucked that old trope that suburban kids turn to drugs out of boredom with their soulless, culture-deprived surroundings.
@ESMOM – Re: drugs and suburban kids trope – I don’t think that’s the trope, at least not where I’m from. It’s the country, rural kids who turn to drugs and alcohol out of boredom, not much else to do. I think city kids have also been seen as more partiers as well. But I think it’s a cocaïne (wealthy drug) vs. Heroine, meth (poorer drugs) that signify the difference. Although addiction is addiction.
I intensely dislike the characterization of New York kids (well, and adults even) as more ‘special’. I agree that this mentality feels like a constant attempt to justify the decision.
NO. Heroine is NOT a “poor person” drug and it hasn’t been for quite some time. Perpetuating that stereotype is why people are living in denial about my heroin-ravaged hometown, which is in the top 20% per capita income in the state and had five heroin OD deaths last year. One town over from that is one of the wealthiest (and smallest) towns in Massachusetts and (top 5% per capita) and had 6 heroin overdoses and 2 deaths from heroin last year.
Heroin vs Oxy: Heroin is the cheaper opiate. Kids start stealing their parents’ pain medications and graduate to heroin and when they run out, they start buying it on the street. When they can no longer afford the pills, heroin is a similar high for exponentially less $$.
Also, it needs to be pointed out that many of these kids come from great families and are enrolled in private schools. Drug addiction is not born out of boredom. Drug addiction is born out of curiosity, accessibility to the drug of choice, genetic proclivity, and simple escapism. Your average curious and slightly insecure teen with a need to escape can fall victim to drug addiction. I know that it’s easier to think that we can control it, but all you can do is lock your medicine cabinet, talk to your kid/be involved, and hope that your child makes smart choices.
Really, heroin is everywhere, as are most drugs. It’s not some city versus suburb issue.
Neither big cities nor small towns hold any sort of exclusivity to kids and drug use.
When my kid was going to start high school, all she heard was, “X school is a druggie school,” “Y school is a druggie school.” We concluded that to people who wanted to put a school down for whatever reason, that school was a druggie school, but in truth they’re all druggie schools to some degree or another.
The druggie schools in richer areas probably had richer drugs.
Bridget is right. Location, urban v. rural, etc. has nothing to do with kids getting into drugs. That has to do with the type of individual, not locale. I live in a small suburban town where life revolves around being outside if at all possible and developing an appreciation for nature and open space. There are those who get into drugs but they would be doing what they’re doing anywhere – regardless of where they live.
I go to see a shrink so I can be a better friend- I just dump all my whining and moaning on her, don’t feel bad because she gets paid for it, and it clears out my head so I can be a good listener and carer for the people I love. Is it a self-indulgent reason for therapy? Maybe.
I think it’s great to go to therapy for your reasons. I did it for 10 years and it helped me so much. My problems are ongoing (severely special needs child) so my friends & family get sick of listening to the same shit over & over.
It’s a great reason. I can’t imagine unloading the crap that I unload to my therapist or doctor onto my friends, i”m sure it would get really old to them really soon.
I’m bipolar and go to therapy because I have to. I have mixed feelings about her. I loved MSCL but something about her has always rubbed me the wrong way. Shrug.
It’s okay for you to feel that way.
Therapy must not work for her, given that after two decades of therapy she still made the life choice to sleep with the partner of her 7 month pregnant friend. Some people are so self involved not even twenty years of self awareness sessions can penetrate their narcissism – Claire Danes is one of those people.
I can’t tell if narcissists go to therapy or if therapy induces narcissism. Maybe a little from both columns.
That’s what I was wondering about? Does the therapist kiss up to her? Because that answer she gave about “exploring” what she needed to, but with no remorse whatsoever, seemed all kinds of weird. I’ll make sure to avoid Claire Danes’s therapist!
She did that after two decades of therapy but then moved on.
And here you are, ten years later, still talking about it.
Her and her husband are such intense actors, I wish they would do some crazy drama together.
I know several people for whom long term therapy is nothing more than an excuse to be self-involved and wrapped ever tighter around their own axle. These are always the most toxic people who believe themselves to be amazing, healthy individuals who are best able to inflict maximum emotional damage. At some point in life, break free of reliance on paid therapy, because its ongoing use doesn’t suggest full emotional wellness.
It may be clear that I am especially annoyed with one such toxic person.
@Betsy, I like your comment. This is quite a good description of the way some very self-obsessed people use therapy. But I like therapy overall; it helped me enormously. I think I’m probably over-critical of Claire Danes and have never really liked her, but that’s not therapy’s fault!
Yeah. See: Woody Allen.
Some people use therapy as a way of justifying their own behavior. Therapists can only go off of one person’s perspective, and a bad therapist will forget that. I’ve met some folks (*cough* my mom) who will try to use their therapist as a weapon – “oh my therapist says that everyone in our family isn’t treating me with respect” kind of crap. Ultimately for a person of reasonably good mental health, the objective of therapy should be to give someone the proper tools to function in the rest of the world, not a bludgeon to get their way or some sort of ongoing naval gazing.
I’m clearly not biased at all either.
Ugh her description of her Soho upbringing is so pretentious, my eyes may never be un-rolled.
Yeah, that made me barf, too. I lived in NYC for a couple of years, and I remember this snotty little six year old asking me, “and where is your country home?” LOL
Ha. I know, city people often feel superior to their suburban counterparts when in reality the existence they create for themselves in the city is more suburban than the suburbs! When we moved to the suburbs, the down to earth, more middle class families were such a refreshing change from the 1 percenters that had been infiltrating our formerly working class neighborhood in the city.
haha, GNAT, I had a kid in NYC tell me his family’s vacation to India was all first class and cost $36,000. That and “where do you summer?”
HA HA HA HA HA
That’s funny.
I grew up in an “outer borough” and no one had a country home or “summered” or anything. Summers in the old days meant sleeping out on the fire escape to get some air, or cracking open the fire hydrant for water play.
Vacations were to the beach or the mountains — by car if you had one, otherwise bus or train.
Big Apple has a lot of normal areas and normal people outside the wealthy enclaves.
Danes sounds a wee bit pretentious.
Mine may be permanently stuck to the back of my head …
I would never have made it through my divorce without therapy, and I’ve gone back during difficult periods on and off. I’m in therapy right now, and I don’t really know why. I fear that it’s because I don’t want to hurt my therapist’s feelings. I went back because I was feeling “stuck.” I don’t love where I live, and I wanted to figure out why it has been so hard for me to make this place a home, but we really just chat about what happened last week. She provides some insight to various situations, but I can’t say it has been revolutionary. Maybe it won’t be because my situation is not very extreme? Anyway, I can’t imagine doing this for twenty years, but whatever works.
Perhaps your visiting her is a way to make where you live a home? It’s something that belongs to you, that ties you there?
Could be. Sometimes I feel like I’m paying her to be my friend, and that feels sort of gross. But at the same time, I depend on her in a way that I’m not sure I can give up. I hadn’t thought about it the way you put it – maybe she helps me feel more tied here.
Aw Gnatty..don’t pay her to be your friend.
Pay ME to be your friend!
(and don’t forget the benefits-I require health insurance and a modest dental plan)
I’m way cheaper than Kitten. Though that’s also because I’m a little whore-ish and kind of cheap in general.
I thought you two were my friends for free! I’ve not made of money, you know!
GNAT, just curious, have you thought about switching therapists? I’ve had situations where the person became more like a friend which changed things for me. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing, but for me, I work better with people who are almost completely detached. There are some months I go and don’t have a lot to talk about. But when I need it, I NEED it. Maybe you could go less often? I hope you find something that works for you! Take care!
Thank you so much. I have thought about switching, but I have already tried several people and she’s the best one I’ve found. My first therapist was wonderful, and I made so much progress with her. But I moved, and I’ve never had that great bond again. I’m thinking you’re right about going less often. I go every other week now, and truthfully, there are times when I’m wracking my brain for something to talk about.
GoodNames, I have very similar ambivalence with my therapist, who has truly been a lifesaver at some of my darkest times. I hit a really rough patch this summer — and I’m also dealing with situations I can’t change, like your not liking where you live — so I started seeing her again this fall after almost two years off. But it’s been unsatisfying for the most part. I cancelled an appointment just this week because I realized I was dreading it. And I’m not sure when I’ll reschedule (we don’t have a set time slot) and that makes me feel vaguely guilty.
As for switching therapists, that would be hard for me because I’m not sure I have it in me to tell my whole story again to anyone new. My current therapist knows and remembers everything, which is nice.
Thanks, Esmom. I don’t know what to do, either. Maybe I’ll try going less often, as BengalCat suggested. I know the feeling of dreading it. Also know the feeling of I can’t really go through this long story again. I hope you find your solution, and I find mine. ❤️
What makes us feel more guilty – leaving a therapist or leaving a hairdresser? I’m probably worse on the latter! Maybe because there really is nothing good that can be done with my hair, whereas my personality…
Ambivalence in therapy is important. As a therapist, what you are likely experiencing is resistance. Tell your therapist. Bring it up in a session. There is something there. Maybe you need a therapy break. I am not a Claire Danes fan. She strikes me as cold but that is only my personal opinion. However, I hope she has had many, many therapy breaks in 20 years. That is an extremely long period of therapy IMO, especially beginning at 6. Holy cow! Therapy can be a great tool in life as I have utilized. I prefer to use goals that clients work on to show progress. I also bring up when we have reached those goals and ask clients if they want to terminate at that time. Life is about constant change and transitions and it is these times it may be helpful to return to therapy (i.e., divorce, births, marriage, deaths).
If your therapist can help you set goals for the therapy/for your life, then you have some kind of external standard to measure whether she is effective at her work. They won’t all do this … it might mean the $$$ stops coming in, and they’re crafty about shifting the focus.
As for not liking where you live, sorry to hear that. Have lived all kinds of places and it makes such a difference. Sometimes all you can do is work with your “place” to give it the elements of what might be there more naturally somewhere else…and sometimes, make a long-term plan to get out!
Some people are more dependent emotionally on their surroundings than others. Some people can set up shop anywhere and not care.
So true. I’ve very influenced by my environment, unfortunately. I need to feel rooted and inspired creatively, and I just can’t seem to make either one happen here. The good news is that my husband plans to retire in the next few years and we both want to move, so at least I’m seeing light at the end of the tunnel.
Glad to hear it. I know you and I are the same age, and I just came out of a long holding period. Since you do have a rough timeline, maybe this is the time to start planning for where you’d like to go and how you would live your life there. The planning itself might be creative and inspiring, it would give you some structure, and you’ll have a head start when you “get there” and won’t simply depend on the place to make everything better. Sometimes it’s good to have some deadlines and cross off the days while you get ready for that journey.
You are allowed to not like where you are, but you might make your own life more tolerable in the mean time. I hope you find your happy place!
One of my close friends had therapy when her husband left her on Christmas day – she said that it was a life saver as it helped her cope with what clearly is a traumatic experience. Well that and the several girls only trips we took to the South of France 😉
I am at the point in life where I don’t really want to make any new friends because it means that I have to listen to their life stories and whining. I prefer to get my drama from a good TV show, movie or novel. That said, I am social and fun and rather popular. I just avoid becoming “besties” with anyone because it is so boring to have to listen to others’ troubles. Definitely a good idea to pay a therapist as most friends are not trained to do more than passively listen or say “buck up”. Perhaps I have met too many neurotic and/or hostile people.
Yes. But what about Rupert Friend? Can we have some Rupert Friend and his amazing girlfriend.
Ah Rupert Friend – love him, he’s such a great actor that needs more lead roles. Stop casting Bloom and cast Rupe instead (loved him in Young Victoria and Boy with the Stripped Pyjamas).
I loved him in Young Victoria – the movie really came alive when it focused on Victoria and Albert.
Frankly, she should spend less time at her therapist’s office and more time getting acting lessons.
I think she’s fabulous in Homeland.
Weak dig. She kills it every week in Homeland.
I love Homeland and think she is incredible on the show.
My first thought after reading the headline is that its time to change therapists. She obviously hasn’t learned the tools she needs, which is really strange, because in her words by living in the city where “It’s hyper-structured and you’re always applying yourself,” she would be more advanced than someone who grew up in the country and never utilized therapy. Please, I know how beneficial and critical therapy can be to some individuals, but typically they work towards meeting goals by getting and learning tools to cope, or they are required due to medications they are taking.
yeah, real helpful. she swiped a man who had a pregnant partner. i’m sure that’s encouraged in therapy. *rollingmyeyes
Danes must need constant validation, is terribly insecure or the therapist is taking advantage of her …seeing a therapist for that period of time is odd.
“…I think that’s why New York kids appear so precocious and advanced compared to their suburban counterparts. I liked that.””
Love how some people want to think where they live is above it all and the “best.” There are pros and cons to both living urban and rural, but I’ve never thought intellect was one of them. I’m not going to argue the specific positives and negatives because it’s all relevant to family, upbringing and personality, but to say urban kids are more advanced is ludicrous. Keep reflecting Claire, because you’re bias is showing through and you obviously haven’t been honest and introspective on that subject to question your motives. That line is worse than Jennifer Garner claiming southern upbringing instills all these positive qualities that bascially defined good manners taught by ANY family with half a brain rather than the location of upbringing getting the credit.
Claire seems flaky. I’m getting a Goop vibe from her that she sees herself smarter than she actually is. And, no, I don’t see life-long therapy from the age of six as helpful or healthy. If anything, it seems quite self-centered – an opportunity to consistently talk about one’s self when there isn’t even a valid reason for it – just someone forced to listen to you blather on about yourself because they’re getting paid to listen.