Actress Claire Danes poses for Reuters to promote her new film ''Stardust'' in Los Angeles July 28, 2007.[Reuters]

 

Actress Claire Danes, who stars in her loftiest role yet, literally, in the new film "Stardust," says she has managed to stay grounded off-screen by following an unconventional Hollywood path.

 

The 28-year-old actress plays a star -- the celestial kind, but in human form -- in a fantasy drama directed by Matthew Vaughn that opens in the United States on Friday.

 

The Paramount film, which also features Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer, follows Danes' character as she falls from the sky and enters a realm where she is chased by a cast of magical characters that want to capture her power.

 

"She's not a classic damsel in distress," Danes said about her "Stardust" character in an interview at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills.

 

"She's a force to be reckoned with. She knows her significance and her power and she's not embarrassed by it," said the actress who, like her character, has not followed the trajectory of a typical movie star.

 

Danes pursues passions away from the TV and film industry and makes decisions that, taken together, have crafted a career unlike many in Hollywood.

 

"She would rather do interesting work than try to fit into a box," J.D. Heyman, a senior editor at People magazine, said about Danes. "I think she's made good choices."

 

Launched by her early 1990s portrayal of an angst-filled teen in the acclaimed TV series "My So-Called Life," Danes took a two-year break from acting, starting in 1998, to study psychology at Yale University, a move she said was important to growing up and connecting with friends.

 

More recently, Danes returned to dance -- which she had pursued as a child and which led initially to acting.

Performing in front of live audiences gave her the confidence to try theater, said Danes, who will make her Broadway debut this fall as Eliza Doolittle in George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion," the play on which the classic musical "My Fair Lady" was based.

 

"I think you need passion," Danes said when asked what a young person needs to sustain a successful acting career. "But I think I also recognized that I needed to find myself outside of the industry."

 

ON FAME

Downing an energy drink, the actress spoke to Reuters about how she survives the ups and downs of the entertainment world.

 

"It's great to work, and being recognizable often leads to getting more jobs," Danes said. "But the perk is not the people pointing. That's just embarrassing."

 

Danes does not often seek the Hollywood spotlight and is rarely the subject of tabloid reporting. One obvious exception was when the actress began dating her "Stage Beauty" co-star, Billy Crudup, who left his very pregnant girlfriend of seven years to be with Danes in 2004.

 

The pair later broke up and Danes is currently dating Hugh Dancy, her co-star in "Evening," a film that opened in U.S. cities this summer to mixed, but mostly poor reviews.

 

"Being aware of peoples' opinions of my work and myself can be disconcerting and even undermining at times," Danes said.

 

The native New Yorker says she tries to think about fame objectively, as if observing herself from a distance.

 

"I think people confuse fame with validation or love," the actress said. "But fame is not the reward. The reward is getting fulfillment out of doing the thing that you love."