Claire Danes received some very priceless recommendation from a future Oscar winner.
In her Selection Actors on Actors dialog with “Half Man” star Richard Gadd, the “The Beast in Me” performer reminisced about capturing 1996’s “Romeo + Juliet” with Leonardo DiCaprio. Whereas the shoot — just like the movie — was emotionally intense, Danes, at 17, tried to lighten the temper by enjoying with an onset firearm simply earlier than capturing her loss of life scene. (Juliet, discovering Romeo lifeless by self-inflicted poison, sobs and shoots herself within the head.) “I remember just blithely playing with the prop gun and putting it to my head, and Leo getting very serious and saying, ‘Claire, we don’t do that. Don’t eff around,’” Danes remembers. “He was right, but I was just being a doofus and a girl.”
Security with prop firearms has acquired new consideration within the years because the tragic onset capturing of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in 2021 on the set of the movie “Rust.” And DiCaprio — who’s labored with weapons in movies like “The Revenant” and “The Departed” — was already conscious of taking particular warning even in his Romeo days. DiCaprio, 21 in the course of the shoot, was already a seasoned professional, having acquired an Oscar nomination for “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” however Danes was no slouch, having led the ABC drama “My So-Called Life” and earned an Emmy nomination. The emotional depth of the shoot was maybe new for her, although, and it introduced one thing out of Danes: Gadd advised her that he’d written a faculty essay on her “guttural sob” she lets out upon discovering Romeo’s physique. (Higher nonetheless, Gadd received a superb grade.) “I remember that moment very distinctly,” Danes says. “I was surprised by it. And the environment was so epic that Baz [Luhrmann] had created. I was moved by the mise en scène, in a way, and the tragedy — but the world he creates helped elicit that feeling.”
Danes, famously, joined “Romeo + Juliet” as a substitute; 14-year-old Natalie Portman, who’d been solid within the function at first, was deemed to read too young on camera reverse her grownup male costar. And whereas her profession — with a number of Emmy wins for “Homeland” and now a much-touted lead on a Netflix hit — has been one to envy, followers of her pairing with DiCaprio could marvel what might need been. In a 2020 interview, Danes revealed that she’d been pursued to play Rose in “Titanic” however advised producers she couldn’t do it. “I was really clear about it, I wasn’t conflicted,” she stated then. “I was feeling eager to have different creative experiences and that felt like a repeat and it was going to propel me towards something that I knew I didn’t have the resources to cope with.”
Learn the total Selection Actors on Actors between Danes and Gadd here or watch it now at CNN.com/Watch or on the CNN app.
