Claire Danes got some invaluable advice from a future Oscar winner.
In a variety actor interview with Half Man star Richard Gadd, the Beast Inside Me actor reminisced about filming 1996’s Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio. Like the movie, filming was emotionally intense, but 17-year-old Danes tried to lighten the mood by playing with a gun just before filming the death scene. (Juliet finds Romeo dead of his own poison, sobbing and shooting himself in the head.) “I remember just playing casually with a prop gun and holding it to his head, and Leo got very serious and said, ‘Claire, we don’t do that. Don’t mess around,'” Daines recalls. “He was right, but I was just a fool and a girl.”
Prop firearm safety has received renewed attention in recent years following the tragic shooting of cinematographer Halina Hutchins on the set of the film The Last in 2021. And DiCaprio, who has worked with guns in films such as “The Revenant” and “The Departed,” was already aware of the special precautions required during his Romeo days. DiCaprio, who was 21 years old at the time of filming, was already a seasoned professional with an Oscar nomination for Eating Gilbert Grape, but Danes was no slouch either, having starred in the ABC drama My So Called Life, which earned him an Emmy nomination. But the emotional intensity of the shoot was perhaps a first for her, and it did something for the Dane. Gad tells her that he wrote a school essay about the “guttle sobs” she let out when she discovered Romeo’s body. (Even better, Gad did well.) “I remember that moment clearly,” Danes says. “I was surprised by that. And the environment that Baz[Luhrmann]created was so epic. I was moved by the mise-en-scenes and the tragedy in a way. But the world that he created helped bring out that emotion.”
It is a well-known story that a Dane participated in “Romeo + Juliet” as a substitute. Originally cast in the role, 14-year-old Natalie Portman was deemed too young to be in front of the camera opposite her adult male co-star. And while her career is enviable, having won multiple Emmys for Homeland and now starring in a Netflix hit, fans who saw her team up with DiCaprio may be wondering what would have been. In a 2020 interview, Danes revealed that she was pursued for the role of Rose in Titanic, but told producers she couldn’t do it. “I was really clear about it, I wasn’t conflicted,” she said at the time. “I wanted to have a variety of creative experiences, but it felt repetitive and pushed me towards something I knew I didn’t have the resources to deal with.”
Read Variety Actor’s full story on Danes and Gad actors here or watch it now on CNN.com/Watch or the CNN app.
