Claire Danes on Body Image: ‘It's OK to be Powerful in Every Way’

Master of None and Homeland actress Claire Danes is on beauty magazine Allure’s December 2015 cover — but she’s talking more about inner beauty than outer beauty.

In 1997 at only age 18, People named her one of the “50 Most Beautiful.” “Everybody falls in love with Claire,” Baz Luhrmann, director of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet starring Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio, told People.

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But almost 20 years later, Danes is tired of the pursuit of beauty.

“I have plenty of vanity in my life. I want to look pretty in the world,” she tells Allure.

“But it can be this bottomless pit. I know some of the most beautiful women on the planet—unequivocally, objectively friggin’ gorgeous — and they are rife with insecurity and self-doubt, and you just think, ‘Well, how can that be?’”

In August 2015, she told People about being body shamed with Lena Dunham on the red carpet at the Emmys.

We were singled out and criticized for having different body types — I was too skinny and she was too big,“ she said.

"She is a dear friend of mine, and it made me angry because this is just how we are.” She expanded upon her thoughts in Allure.

"It’s just so ingrained in us, the idea that we should take up the right amount of space, literally and figuratively,” she said.

“I’ve wrestled with this my whole life, as just a person in the world and as somebody who makes images.”

In the story, however, she does give some personal beauty advice: It’s either eyes or lips. It’s like legs or boobs: You shouldn’t do both,” she said, noting that this should be your first question when you get ready to go out.

After being in Hollywood since age 12, Danes has developed a calm attitude towards beauty: “It’s OK to work at being attractive, whatever that means to you. And it’s also OK to not expect to be defined by that. It’s OK to be powerful in every way: to be big, to take up space. To breathe and thrive.”