Claire Danes

“Some Like It Hot I saw I think when I was five. I… I remember watching it in the bathtub. I watched it twice in a row in the bathtub, and it was very cold and I was very pruney by the end of it, but it was just, like, revelatory. It actually makes me really, really want to watch it with my own kids. I have so many kids now. And, I mean, the three of them together, it was just magic times a million. The best. So, Marilyn, it’s the three ‘M’s, I call it...”

“And Molly. I mean, I was born in ’79. I’m a child of the ’80s. These John Hughes movies, holy moly, were they everything to me. But this movie is a masterpiece. And Anthony Michael Hall, oh my God, so vulnerable and so hilarious, and just a throbbing, beating heart, all of them. The Breakfast Club. The Breakfast Club.”

“And then Defending Your Life and… So, now, what a love story and what an imaginative way to, you know, contextualize a love story. So, okay, they go in there.”

“Okay, Dogfight, River Phoenix and Lili Taylor. And those actors are some of the finest actors that have ever lived, but certainly, like, of my generation. Handsome boy meets, you know, we’re not supposed to think very beautiful girl, but come on, who are we kidding? Star-crossed lovers and empathy and love where you least expect it.”

“Yes, A Woman Under the Influence. Okay, this I talk about kind of in relationship to Streetwise because I watched it, like, for my work. I should have just seen it because it’s a classic, but when I was starting to think about Carrie Mathison, I’m pretty sure it’s never explicitly stated that she’s bipolar, and I was playing somebody with that condition as well, but it is so… authentic. She’s working so hard to make… to make full sense of what’s happening. And she’s always just falling short of that. But it’s just, like, drenched with love. It’s just brilliant. God.”

“I’ll do The Grifters because I saw this much earlier than I should have seen it. It’s when I discovered Annette Bening, I think, and she was so dangerous and super raw and so hot. What a good cover, too, like the glasses, it says it all. But everybody’s brilliant in this. But I remember just thinking like, “Ooh, that’s naughty.” So that would be, I guess, my final one.”

“Okay, we are now going to venture here, to the streets of Seattle. Streetwise. I discovered this movie not too long ago when I was shooting Fleishman Is in Trouble and one of our PAs, who was brilliant, this guy Eli, loved him, real cinephile, was wearing a T-shirt that kind of referenced this movie, which is about street kids, and when I was thinking about the character I was playing, I was working with my friend who, when I was starting to put her together, he had really a helpful insight as I was trying to explain to him who she was and what she was… why she was suffering, and said, “It sounds like she’s like a runaway, like a teenage runaway, and there’s something kind of feral about her, or just– like there’s no support, like the ground is falling out from under her.” So I watched it with that in mind, which is a funny connection, but it was the key into her, and this was a wonderful resource. But it’s just heartbreaking. And they’re so tough and cool and resilient and also, you know, vulnerable. Amazing movie.”