Claire Danes on Going Basically Bald for Beauty and What She Hides From Her Husband

Claire Danes has been killing it on TV (between Homeland and Master of None, she’s dominating our DVR) and on the red carpet, and now she’s landed a gorgeous magazine cover, Allure‘s December issue, where she opens up about body shaming in Hollywood, the world’s obsession with being “flawless” and her worst-ever hair experience.

Courtesy Allure

The 36-year-old star opens up in the beauty mag’s December issue about everyone’s obsession (including Bey, herself) with being “flawless” and how Danes just doesn’t see the point. (Especially when asked about her famous “cry face.”)

“I’m very vain about my performance. I want to give as honest a performance as I can. But I’m not so worried about being regarded as beautiful when I’m playing a character,” she told Allure. “I have plenty of vanity in my life. I want to look pretty in the world. But I can be this bottomless pit. I know some of the most beautiful women on the planet — unequivocally, objectively friggin’ gorgeous — and they are rife with insecurity and self doubt, and you just think, ‘Well how can that be?’”

She adds that she feels too fulfilled in her life to give into self-doubt: “I’m attractive enough. I can do the work I want to do. I’ve found a wonderful man who wants to make out with me. I’m good.”

And that includes no longer keeping beauty secrets from said “wonderful man” (that would be husband Hugh Dancy) — the good, the bad and the ugly. “I’m afraid my husband has seen it all,” she said. “We just pretend we haven’t.”

Courtesy Allure

She does still maintain some boundaries — when it comes to getting glam, that is. “It’s either eyes or lips. It’s like legs or boobs: You shouldn’t do both,” she said. “That’s always the first question when you sit down to get ready for the night.”

Another “Don’t” on Danes’s beauty list? Fighting with her tresses. “My hair is desperately straight. I’ve always wanted curly hair,” she told Allure. “I got a perm when I was eight. Burned all my hair off, basically, but I still loved it.”

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Courtesy Allure

Earlier this year, Danes opened up to PEOPLE on Hollywood’s standards of beauty, claiming that there is too much body shaming and bullying in the industry. And she touched on the topic once again in Allure.

“It’s just so ingrained in us, the idea that we should take up the right amount of space, literally and figuratively,” she told Allure. “I’ve wrestled with this my whole life, as just a person in the world and as somebody who make images. It’s okay to want to look and feel your best. It’s okay to work at being attractive, whatever that means to you.”

She adds: “And it’s also okay to not expect to be defined by that. It’s okay to be powerful in every way: to be big, to take up space. To breathe and to thrive.” Hear, hear.

RELATED VIDEO: Claire Danes’s Changing Looks!

What do you think of Danes’s thoughts on body image and beauty? Do you agree? Share below!

–Sarah Kinonen
Follow @sarahkinonen