Despite some mediocre movies, Danes is best known and praised for her work on television, particularly as teen angst icon Angela Chase. She also has found herself embroiled in a series of tabloid-worthy romances.

Danes grew up in SoHo and began studying modern dance at age four. She got her big break, playing awkward 15-year-old Angela Chase in the short-lived but culturally-influential 1994 ABC drama My So-Called Life. The part won her a Golden Globe in 1995 and led her into films, such as Juliet to Leonardo DiCaprio's Romeo in Baz Luhrmann's weirdo 1996 Shakespeare interpretation, Romeo + Juliet. Danes went to Yale for a while, but dropped out in 2002 to refocus on acting. While she appeared in movies like Shopgirl, Stardust, and the heinous The Family Stone, she has proved television might be where she does her best work, with Emmy and Golden Globe wins for her performance in Temple Grandin and a high profile role on Showtime's Homeland in 2011.

In terms of tabloid fodder, she notoriously "stole" actor Billy Crudup (who is a decade her senior) from his girlfriend, Mary Louise Parker, who was eight months pregnant at the time. Danes and Crudup's relationship hit the skids in December 2006 and in 2009, she married Brit actor Hugh Dancy. [Image via Getty]