Claire Danes covers the August issue of Vogue, and the Annie Leibovitz photoshoot also includes some (incredibly sexy) photos of Damian Lewis. I love Homeland-themed photoshoots!! Especially when Damian Lewis is all gingery and sullen. The whole shot is rather striking and interesting, and as for fashion… major coat p0rn. I love the brown suede coat Claire is wearing in the car with Damian. The photo of Damian in uniform with Claire draped on him? Does that remind anyone else of Romeo & Juliet? Star-crossed lovers and all. Truth. You can see Vogue’s slideshow here, and you can read the whole interview with Claire here. Some highlights:

Spending the day at the real Langley: “When I spent the day at Langley, they were very forthright and said”—she switches to a deep man’s voice—“ ‘You know, we’re always recruiting, and it’s not all that often that we’re rendered in pop culture. We’d like to have some influence on that.’ They were just so direct. It was admirable, actually, kind of ironically transparent.”

At the Golden Globes, she was summoned to a room to talk to Bill Clinton. “Magnetic,” she says. “A mammoth brain.” It was a whirlwind event. Her newborn son, Cyrus, was upstairs at the Beverly Hilton with her parents, and she was able to go in and out of the action all night. “I went on the red carpet, went upstairs, fed Cyrus. Went into the ceremony, got the award, went back to feed Cyrus, went out again. . . . Then it was ‘Now you meet the president.’ ” As a nursing mom, she says, “I had these new boobs; I’m wearing a big Jessica Rabbit dress, and I’d been living in sweat pants for so long. . . . It was strange. It was dreamy, surrounded by my parents and my husband. It was one of the best nights of my life because of this perfect mash-up.”

Deciding to do Homeland: She was considering two parts in the same weekend, having just auditioned for the role of secretary to Leonardo DiCaprio’s J. Edgar Hoover in Clint Eastwood’s 2011 biopic. “I was like, ‘Do I want to play the secretary to the boss man or do I want to be the boss man?’ ” She curls up her nose. “I want to be the boss man.” Finally, there was that other voice telling Danes to take the role. “I was scared of it, and I thought, OK, right, that means I have to do it.”

The contemporaries she admires: “I’m so impressed by Jennifer Lawrence and Carey Mulligan,” she says. “They have this exquisite taste. They are very gifted in their ability to make great choices. I didn’t have that rudder.” It took a while to sift through the movie-star thing and realize she could just do what had drawn her to the industry in the first place. Acting. “There’s the movie star that plays herself and the movie star like Meryl that has this wonderful, glamorous persona intact and is undone every time she takes on a new character. I think I’m astounded and titillated by that.”

[From Vogue]

The whole piece is lengthy and I only got about halfway through before I decided to save it for another day. Claire talks a lot about her education, going to Yale, slowly developing a close network of girlfriends, and she also talks a lot about being an out-of-work actress for many years, mostly because she didn’t want to just sign on to roles where she was playing “the girl”. It’s interesting. Also interesting? From what I’ve read thus far, there are no quotes from Damian. Isn’t that weird?

Photos courtesy of Annie Leibovitz/VOGUE.