Danes’s solitary youth

Claire Danes spent her teen years terrified of other kids, said Stuart McGurk in GQ (U.K.). Her fear started in junior high, where she was viciously bullied by a fellow student. “There was one girl who would get very excited about the idea of torturing me,” says the 33-year-old actress. “It was just agony. I developed a real phobia of people my age. Girls especially.” At age 14 she was cast in the TV show My So-Called Life, and was so lonely that she “would just sit on a sidewalk and look at other teenagers.” Her solitary existence ended at age 16, when a production assistant befriended her on a movie set. “She became a big sister and a wonderfully corrupting influence. She slapped me around a bit, and really encouraged me to get stupid.” In 1998, Danes took a break from acting and went to Yale, where she did all the rebellious things—getting drunk and partying—that she’d missed out on as a teenager. Danes only stayed two years, but says they were important ones. “I could have gone through life thinking that women were these venomous creatures. Turns out, they’re not.”

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