{"id":308397,"date":"2026-01-28T18:06:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T18:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/308397\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T18:06:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T18:06:07","slug":"claire-danes-says-she-freaked-out-when-she-found-she-was-pregnant-at-44","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/308397\/","title":{"rendered":"Claire Danes says she freaked out when she found she was pregnant at 44"},"content":{"rendered":"

Claire Danes<\/a> has said she went into \u201cmeltdown\u201d when she discovered she was pregnant<\/a> with her third child at age 44.<\/p>\n

The \u201cHomeland\u201d star revealed that she burst into tears when she found out she and her husband, the actor Hugh Dancy<\/a>, were expecting their third child.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Amy Poehler<\/a> for her podcast Good Hang<\/a>, the actress said: \u201cI called my ob-gyn in convulsive tears. It was a pure \u2026 it was all meltdown.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was not just Danes\u2019 age that made the news a surprise but the fact that she had previously struggled to conceive.<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of this was by design,\u201d she said, adding that her three children are all five years apart. \u201cI didn\u2019t know it was physically possible \u2014 I was 44. And actually Rowan (Danes\u2019 second son) was very hard-earned. I had to do two rounds of IVF. It just was so unlikely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Danes, who shot to fame starring opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Baz Luhrmann\u2019s 1996 \u201cRomeo + Juliet,\u201d told Poehler that she had been at a spa with a close friend, to whom she confided her suspicion that she might be pregnant.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t going to say anything and finally I admitted it,\u201d she told Poehler, saying that she said to her friend: \u201cI totally lost my mind last night and just decided I was pregnant. I went down this crazy rabbit hole and finally looked up what are the odds of naturally conceiving at 44 and they\u2019re like less than 1% one per cent.\u2019 I was like \u2018so that obviously is ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response, her friend revealed that she had had a dream that she herself was pregnant \u2014 but was in Danes\u2019 body.<\/p>\n

Danes recalled that she had \u201ctwo strong cocktails\u201d and the following day took a test. \u201cIt was like bold, cap lock PREGNANT and I burst into tears,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then this beautiful girl emerged and she\u2019s the best and none of it was up to me and I\u2019m just delighted,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Although it is not the first time that Danes has spoken of her surprise at becoming pregnant \u2014 when she appeared on \u201cThe Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon\u201d in 2023 she said \u201cthis one was a surprise\u201d \u2014 it is the first time she has revealed her daughter\u2019s name: Shay.<\/p>\n

Earlier in her chat with Poehler, Danes said of her daughter, who was born in July 2023: \u201cShay, my baby, she\u2019s very kind of in her head and dreamy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in November, in an interview with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett on the Smartless<\/a> podcast, Danes said her pregnancy experience was \u201creally interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

She explained: \u201cIt was weird \u2014 suddenly I felt, like, a funny shame \u2026 like I was naughty. Like I had been caught fornicating past the point I was meant to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Danes and British actor Dancy first met in 2007 on the set of the romantic drama film \u201cEvening,\u201d and they married in 2009.<\/p>\n

She was recently nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in the Netflix series \u201cThe Beast in Me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alli Rosenbloom contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Claire Danes has said she went into \u201cmeltdown\u201d when she discovered she was pregnant with her third child…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268],"tags":[71598,434,96293,18,117,96294,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-308397","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-amy-poehler","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-claire-danes","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-hugh-dancy","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115974057670950112","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}