Claire Danes is forever grateful to have been rescued by My So-Called Life creator Winnie Holzman.
In the coming-of-age drama, Claire played Angela Chase, a high school student navigating friendships and more.
Winnie was honored at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts annual gala on Monday, April 7, and the Romeo and Juliet actress gushed over how the writer played a major role in her career.
“Oh my God, how lucky was I? I was 13 when I shot that pilot,” Danes recalled.
“When I met this genius woman, this Cyrano, who wrote one perfect diary entry after another for me, who rescued me from the punishing halls of actual high school and transported me to the halls of self-reflection and art, of poetry and music."
“Who allowed me to be exactly as I felt I was not, who I was supposed to be, who I was supposed to see on TV,” she explained.
“Back then, it was literally the first of its kind, the first show to revolve around a girl, played by an actual girl, to explore the contours of female friendship, to expose the frailties of the marriage and Angela's midlife parents,” she continued.
“I often call Winnie my fairy godmother because she's played such a pivotal role in my life as an artist and person,” Claire Danes explained. “But it turns out she's everyone's fairy godmother. She basically defined the contemporary iteration of a fairy godmother for an entire generation.”