Claire Danes in Stardust David James/Courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Calling the sets "ginormous" and "beautiful," Danes points out that Stardust is a fantasy movie that takes place in Victorian times, "but I think Matthew was really concerned with it reading as contemporary. He wanted to make it accessible, so it's a little timeless in that sense, but really lush and full of imagination."

Aside from luminescent makeup and 24-carat white-gold hair, how does one go about playing a celestial body that morphs into female human form?

"It was a little awkward," Danes confesses, "because the idea is that I've observed human behavior and I have a sense of what it is to be human. But it's only from a great distance. And I only have an abstract sense of it. So, then, once I do assume this human form, I then have to experience more directly what it is to have those feelings and suffer from conflict."

Stardust is a high-tech fable that seems tailor-made for young audiences looking for a relief from this summer's sentient machines from outer space and die-hard detectives out to save the world. But it also rides the coattails of cinema's recent romance with fairy-tale goblins, fantastic nether worlds, and teenage magicians.

This film, says Danes, is "witty and a little irreverent and playful and fantastical and beautiful. And epic and sweet." And it could not differ more from Danes's recent turn in Lajos Koltai's adaptation of Susan Minot's novel Evening, a meditation on love, loss, grief, and strength in the face of death. In Evening, Danes plays Ann Grant, a struggling young torch singer from New York who finds love at the high-society Newport wedding of a college friend. Circumstances tear the lovers apart and, when the two meet years later, she is again unable to follow her heart.

Danes, who once said that all her relationships are "so heavy" and "implode after a certain point," has become more philosophical on the topic: "It's so hard to know what is your true desire and what isn't. Life is so full of illusion and trickery. You try your best and see what lasts and what feels appropriate and what doesn't and make adjustments accordingly."

Claire Danes and Charlie Cox in Stardust David James/Courtesy of Paramount Pictures

During her teenage years, Danes experienced being tabloid fodder, having dated Australian singer-songwriter Ben Lee, her The Rainmaker costar Matt Damon, and others. But her involvement in Richard Eyre's Stage Beauty overflowed into a much-publicized and scrutinized off-screen romance with Billy Crudup, who, during their short-lived relationship, left his former long-term companion Mary-Louise Parker while she was pregnant. Danes is now dating her Evening costar, British actor Hugh Dancy, hanging out in New York, and taking life as it comes.

"I'm a pretty domestic person. I like my routine and my dog. It takes enormous inspiration for me to abandon that," she says, though she may next busy herself pursuing some frivolous summer fun. "I'm gonna enjoy. Go find a beach somewhere and plop myself down on it.

"I'm just grateful. I'm very fortunate just to keep being employed. I don't know what I'm doing next. I mean, Stardust is coming out, and I'm trying to figure out what I want to get lost in. It's such a weighty decision. Every project I do seems to consume me and even reshape my life."