Claire Catherine Danes is an American actor. She is the recipient of three Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 2012, Time Magazine named her one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, and she was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2015. Take a look below for 28 more interesting and fascinating facts about Claire Dames.

1. Danes was born in the Manhattan borough of New York City, the daughter of sculptor and printmaking artist, Carla Danes, and photographer Christopher Danes.

2. Her older brother, Asa, is a lawyer.

3. Danes’ parents met when they were studying at the Rhode Island School of Design.

4. Danes’ mother was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in 1945 and has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting and education from the Rhode Island School of Design (1967), an Associate of Applied Science in textile design from Fashion Institute of Technology (1971), a master’s degree in early childhood education from Hunter College (1987), and a Master of Fine Arts from Otis College of Art and Design (2002).

5. During Danes’ childhood her mother ran a small toddler day-care center called Danes Tribe out of the family’s SoHo loft to supplement her work as a painter and textile designer, and later served as Danes’ manager.

6. Danes’ father was born in Austin, Texas, in 1944 and, after studying biology and civil engineering at Brown University, received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography from Rhode Island School of Design(1968), where he studied with Harry Callahan.

7. During Danes’ childhood her father worked as a general contractor for 20 years, working on residential buildings in a company he ran called Overall Construction in New York.

8. He also worked as a photographer and computer consultant. \

9. He is the son of Gibson Andrew Danes, a former dean of the Yale School of Art and Architecture from 1958 to 1968.

10. Danes is named after her paternal grandmother, Claire Danes, who died in 1953.

11. The family lived in an artist’s loft on Crosby Street.

12. Danes attended P.S. 3 and PS 11 for elementary school and Professional Performing Arts School for junior high school.

13. Danes attended the New York City Lab School for Collaborative Studies in New York City (the same school her Homeland co-star Morena Baccarin attended).

14. She attended The Dalton School for one year of high school before moving with her parents to Santa Monica, California for the role in My So-Called Life.

15. Danes said they moved two days after the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

16. Danes graduated from the Lycée Français de Los Angeles in 1997.

17. In 1998, Danes began studies at Yale University. Director Oliver Stone wrote a letter of recommendation. After studying for two years as a psychology major, she dropped out to focus on her film career.

18. Danes started studying dance when she was six years old. Danes took dance classes from Ellen Robbins at Dance Theater Workshop and acting classes at HB Studio the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute at the age of 10.

19. She appeared in theater and video productions in New York City.

20. Although she continued to dance, Danes said that her focus shifted to acting by the time she was nine years old. Her audition with Miloš Forman when she was 11 led to roles in several student films.

21. She signed with agent Karen Friedman at the Writers & Artists talent agency at age 12.

22. In 1997, Danes wrote an introduction to Neil Gaiman’s Death: The Time of Your Life.

23. In 2012, Danes’s audiobook recording of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale was released at Audible.com. Her performance won the 2013 Audie Award for fiction.

24. She hosted the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo.

25. Before she had her first kiss in real life, she had one on-screen at age fourteen with Jared Leto, then twenty-one, in an episode of My So-Called Life.

26. She has been in therapy since the age of six, and considers it, “a helpful tool and a luxury to self-reflect and get some insight”.

27. Danes met Australian singer Ben Lee at her eighteenth birthday party in 1997. They dated for almost six years before their relationship ended in 2003.

28. Danes met actor Hugh Dancy on the set of Evening in 2006 in Newport, Rhode Island. They began dating and announced their engagement in February 2009. They married in France in a secret ceremony in late August or early September 2009. Their first child, a son, was born in December 2012.