Claire Danes Once Found Working With Zac Efron Terrifying Because of His Fame
Zac Efron once teamed up with Homeland star Claire Danes for the flick Me and Orson Welles. And although Danes already collaborated with several leading men, she felt Efron’s own popularity was the most intimidating.
How Claire Danes felt working with Zac Efron
Danes and Efron teamed up to star in the 2008 feature Me and Orson Welles. Efron played an aspiring actor in the film, with Danes portraying a production assistant. Being paired with Efron, the veteran actor was impressed by what the High School Musical star brought to the table.
“Zac’s amazing. I was really delighted to discover how fine an actor he is, it’s true. And he can move very well. We took some dancing lessons for a brief scene in the dance hall and that was very humbling. Zac was a much quicker study than I was, he’s a very coordinated guy,” Danes once said according to News Shopper.
However, Danes felt that Efron’s fame at the time posed a problem. The actor wasn’t a stranger to collaborating with Hollywood heartthrobs throughout her career. But even being paired with the likes of Jared Leto and Leonardo DiCaprio didn’t match what she experienced with Efron.
“He’s like, really famous. It’s different. It’s wild. I’ve never seen a person have that kind of effect on many, many teenagers. It was crazy, there were girls camped outside of our hotel room for days, literally chanting, ‘We want Zac!’ It was kind of terrifying,” she once said according to Female First.
Likewise, Efron also found working with Danes a bit nerve-racking for different reasons.
“I’ve seen so many of her movies – she’s so beautiful, I didn’t want to disappoint,” Efron once told GMTV (via The Independent). “I didn’t want her to be like, ‘Who is this kid?'”
Claire Danes didn’t do ‘Titanic’ because she wasn’t ready to deal with that level of fame
Despite being an actor, Danes has stated several times that she wasn’t comfortable with the idea of gaining too much fame. She’d seen the kind of toll too much fame took on other celebrities, and it was a lifestyle she wanted to avoid.
“I cannot imagine what it would be like to be Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Aniston,” Danes once told the New York Times. “I was watching a documentary about Britney Spears, and what she has to cope with really shook me.”
Her aversion to fame has even influenced some of her career decisions in the past. Before Kate Winslet, Danes once shared she was also considered for Titanic alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. But she rejected the part because of the film’s potential impact on her future.
“I think I may have sensed that I was courting that [level of fame] or I was proximate to that. I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t want it,” she said on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert.
After seeing what happened to DiCaprio, Danes might have been right to trust her instincts. And to this day, the star had no regrets for turning down the movie.
“It was going to propel me to something I knew I didn’t have the resources to cope with. I knew I had to do a lot of foundation building,” she said.
Claire Danes took a break from acting to focus on her education
Danes went on a hiatus from the film industry to focus more on her college education. She attended Yale for three years, which helped her forge her own identity away from Hollywood. After further immersing herself in college studies, she couldn’t believe she was an actor at all.
“I was very committed to being a student while I was there. So much so that I’m in disbelief that I had ever acted before. That was confusing. That really challenged my sense of self for a while, but I think in a really positive way, because I was very careful not to lament my choices in life,” she once said according to IGN.
Still, the Romeo + Juliet star couldn’t avoid movie-making for long.
“Three years had passed since I had acted, and I missed it. I missed it terribly,” she said.
