Real-Life Celebrity Couple: Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy

Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy – unlike so many a celebrity before them, Danes and Dancy appreciate the other’s talent. She says that “watching your partner do something they are really good at is so hot.”

How Did Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy Meet?

There first interaction with one another was on the set of the 2007 dramatic film, Evening. It wasn’t exactly love at first sight, but a friendship did develop. And then something a little more special.

Remembers Danes, “I was very recently single, and I had never been single before, so we were just friends for a while. [Hugh and I] met in Rhode Island when it was at its most audaciously beautiful, in the fall. And there was one day when we were bicycling by the water and it was sparkly and idyllic, and I just had this dumb epiphany, like, I’m really just happy.”

She would later admit that her attraction to Dancy intensified after discovering that he was “a big nerd, too,” but it took him showing off a very particular skill set before she realized he was “the one.”

“When we first started sorta-kinda-dating for real (ish), I had an ornament-making party for Christmas, and he helped organize it,” the Romeo + Juliet actress remembered. “Then he made an ornament of cowboy paper dolls, and I thought, ‘and he crafts?’ That was it. You have me for the rest of our lives.”

Super Secret Courtship 
The two quietly dated until Danes confirmed the rumors during an appearance on the Late Show With David Letterman in June of the above mentioned year. In February 2009, the couple announced their engagement and held their nuptials in a private, friends-and-family-only event in France.

Actress Mamie Gummer, who co-starred with the pair on Evening (and is the daughter of Meryl Streep) and remembers them bonding over games of Boggle and Scrabble, was one of the few select witnesses.

Rules To Live By

Well, not rules per se, but according to Dancy, he and Danes have “things to aspire to.” He says that they both recognize the need for the other to be “happy independently and fulfilled in what we do,” and concedes that there “needs to be some elbow room.” However, there is some “basic stuff” that they’ve agreed to, like “don’t take a job in Australia without telling me!”

The Brood Expands
On December 17, 2012, Danes and Dancy welcomed Cyrus Michael Christopher into the world. Six years later, during an appearance on The Howard Stern Show, Danes confided to the host and his millions of listeners, “I am pregnant, seriously preggo.”

Rowan was born on August 27, 2018. In preparation for boy number two, Danes took an extended maternity leave which she later equated to a “huge luxury,” considering the fact that she had continued to film Homeland well into the eighth month of her first pregnancy.

Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy – Miles Between Them

For the majority of their time together, Danes and Dancy would spend large portions of the year living apart. She would decamp to North Carolina during production of her Showtime thriller while he remained in New York or traveled to Toronto where NBC’s Hannibal made its home.

And absence did indeed make their hearts grow fonder. Danes admits that the long-distance relationship was both, “tough,” and, “toxic,” and she cops to being, “just bad at it.” The biggest takeaway the couple gleaned from the experience was that it’s, “essential… for us to be physically together as often as possible.”