Claire Danes is seven years younger than her My So-Called Life love interest Jared Leto — yet she handled their romantic scenes with professionalism.
“A little [awkwardness], but it was OK,” Danes, 46, told The Guardian in a Friday, October 31, profile of their onscreen kisses. “I had barely kissed a boy and here I was making out with this Adonis, and I didn’t even know how to interpret the stage directions.”
Danes landed the role of Angela Chase on My So-Called Life when she was just 14 years old. Leto, now 53, was 21 when he was cast as her onscreen crush, Jordan Catalano.
“Like [the script] said I was supposed to kiss his face, and I did not know what that meant,” Danes told the British newspaper. “I didn’t know that there was any other terrain that one could explore.”
My So-Called Life Cast: Then & Now
She continued, “[Being a teenager] is so Kafka-esque. It’s a really wild ride, and there I was, having a parallel one as a fictional self.”
Despite Danes and Leto’s questionable onscreen age difference, the actress said that she never felt exploited.
“[The crew was] bona fide benevolent grownups, so it was a very solid, sane environment,” Danes said. “That was luck. Not every environment is.”
Danes, however, isn’t sure whether casting actors with the same age gap would yield the same results in today’s film industry.
“I really don’t know. We might, would we not? I honestly don’t know what my moral stance on that is. Maybe because it just was my experience, and I felt safe,” Danes said, explaining how on-set intimacy coordinators have set a new standard for romantic scenes. “How did we not have that before? I’m very for it. But it is funny to be working with an intimacy coordinator for the first time as a 45-year-old. Like, it’s a little late.”
Danes credits her perspective to the adults she looked up to back then.
“My parents were always very present when I was on set as a kid, and made sure I was protected and my needs were met,” the Beast in Me star stated. “[They made sure] I had a good tutor, and sufficient rest, that kind of thing.”
Danes further revealed that fellow acting icon Jodie Foster doled out pearls of wisdom, as well.
Alicia Silverstone Almost Played Angela Chase on My So-Called Life!
“She said a lot of things, but she always has urged me to advocate for myself,” Danes said of Foster, 62, who directed her in 1995’s Home for the Holidays. “And also to relax.”
In the years since My-So Called Life ended, Leto has been vocal about what it was like being objectified on the teen drama.
“Oh, yeah, it was about time,” Leto told Rolling Stone in 2016. “I’m happy to have taken that, uh, baton or whatever.”
Despite playing a TV heartthrob, the Oscar winner admitted that his love life wasn’t as seamless as TV made it seem.
“You know what I’ve learned about women? I know absolutely nothing about women,” he quipped at the time. “The older I get, it’s just people. I just see people.”
