Photograph by Jennifer Cooper

Claire Danes
Mirabelle Butterfield, ShopGirl 
Age: 26
Birthplace: New York
Essential filmography: Romeo + Juliet (1996), Brokedown Palace (1999), Igby Goes Down (2002), The Hours (2002), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), Stage Beauty (2004)

The glove department at Saks Fifth Avenue is not a happening place. In the nuanced May-September romance Shopgirl, based on Steve Martin’s novella, artist and glove vendor Mirabelle stands behind the counter for days without moving a muscle. “She’s physically inert because she’s emotionally inert, and I was worried that I would lose the interest of the audience because I was so unanimated,” admits Claire Danes. “I got very anxious about that, like, ‘You sure you don’t want me to just cock my eyebrow? Just for fun? Something? Please, please?’”

But in her off hours, the two men in Mirabelle’s life paint plenty of expressions on the blank canvas of her face. An emotionally unavailable millionaire (Martin) breaks her young heart, and a slowly evolving Neanderthal (Jason Schwartzman) eventually wins it. “Jason was always making things up, which made it impossible for me to be anything other than totally present,” Danes recalls. “When he says, ‘Are you gonna kiss me or what,’ ‘Good night. I love you,’ and ‘I’ll protect you,’ I just had to react to him, basically. I was riding his wave.”

Despite the challenge of playing straight man to two very different male costars, Danes nailed nearly every scene in under three takes after doing virtually no preparation aside from reading the novella and the script. “I was playing a girl who was essentially my age and at a similar stage in her life,” she says. “The parallels were easy to find.”

With each self-effacing utterance, Danes reveals that she’s not so different from the “everywomen” that she has made a career of portraying, from My So-Called Life’s Angela to Shopgirl’s Mirabelle. “She has that wonderful Ingrid Bergman–esque quality of allowing you to project all of your own emotions into her, and she can be pretty and plain all at the same time,” says director Anand Tucker. “It really was the easiest job of casting I’ve ever done. There’s an essential part of Claire that is Mirabelle.”—Cristy Lytal