Claire Danes: Makeover story

Claire Danes, who played Juliet in the Baz Luhrmann film Romeo+Juliet, makes her Broadway debut as Eliza Doolittle in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion this month.

Her co-star will be Jefferson Mays, playing Henry Higgins, the phonetics expert who attempts to teach Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl, to act and speak like a lady. Pygmalion, which will run for two months, is being produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company.

A New Yorker, Danes is in the process of acquiring a Cockney accent prior to taking the plunge as Eliza Doolittle, despite being, she thinks, the only person on the planet who has never seen My Fair Lady. “I’ve done a standard British accent before, in Stage Beauty and now in Stardust, but Cockney is completely different,” she says. “Even English actors can get it wrong, so it’s really a challenge.”

Stars far more experienced than Danes have come a cropper with misjudged attempts at foreign accents, but making her Broadway debut in Cockney is clearly a risk Danes is relishing.

“I’m not doing Pygmalion for the money,” she laughs. “My shoe collection is not going to be terribly improved, but I am so excited and I feel very flattered that they think I’m worthy of the task. We’ll see. It’s a beautifully written play and I think that when I waver and falter, which I invariably will — every actor does over a long run — I’ll be able to fall back on the strength of the material so I’ll gain some security from that. But yes, I’m nervous. Of course I am.”

Danes had never read the play before being offered the part either. “It’s the best makeover story of all time,” she says of Pygmalion. “Everybody loves a good makeover story.”

(Agencies)