THE PAIN IN DANES

No one cries with as much intensity as Claire Danes, and Netflix's new thriller 'The Beast in Me' gives her free rein to embody agony. No one cries with as much intensity as Claire Danes, and Netflix's new thriller 'The Beast in Me' gives her free rein to embody agony. Patrick Smith has his guts wrenched again

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Few do suffering like Claire Danes. Watching any drama she stars in feels like meeting up with a friend who has been through a breakup they just can't get over: there comes a moment when you realise, “Oh no, she’s going to cry. It’s going to be tectonic. Can I cope with the sheer depth of her misery?!” The brow crumples, the eyes scrunch, the lip quivers, the voice splinters. It's gut-wrenching. That impressively pliable face can register about 13 different kinds of agony. And in The Beast in Me, Netflix's new thriller about an author with a psychopathic neighbour, there is nowhere to hide, no way to prepare yourself. It happens in the opening scene, her face rearing up out of the screen, blood-spattered, eyes aghast, mouth moving, trying to take in something so horrible that we can only guess at it. Then it comes: a full-throated howl of despair that could rock you to the very core of your spleen.

It's classic Danes. After all, she trades in high nervous tension. Spot the frowns in Homeland. As CIA officer Carrie Mathison in the hit terrorism drama, she made unravelling look like an art form, her cry-face becoming both a meme and a symbol of unrelenting determination. Or think of her in Fleishman Is in Trouble