Claire Danes earned a permanent place in the hearts of many television viewers back in 1993 when, at the age of 14, she played Angela Chase to screenwriter (and stage musical stage book writer) Winnie Holtzman in the short-lived ABC drama My So-Called Life ". It was rare to see a teenage character portrayed by an actor of the same age (Dance was actually a year younger than 15-year-old Angela) and what a startling difference it made. Dance effortlessly conveyed the terror and delight of a high school freshman in America, which meant she could go from heartbreakingly sympathetic to downright irritating on a dime. That's what teenagers are like. We've all been there once.

Some of us also had the opportunity as teenagers to leave the communities in which we were raised and visit other cultures and countries. In retrospect, these were vital experiences that broadened our understanding of the world and taught us the importance of empathy. This is how we grow and hopefully become more enlightened human beings.

It's one thing to visit another country as an exchange student, and quite another to do so as a rising movie star making a major studio film. So when Claire Danes was sent to the Philippines in the late 1990s to film Jonathan Kaplan's Brokedown Palace (a riff on Alan Parker's Midnight Express), she was shrouded in privilege; however, since the film was shot in poverty-stricken areas of the country (doubling for Thailand), she was exposed to conditions that were disconcertingly foreign to her.

It had an effect on her. And when she shared her honest reaction to it all with the American media, she drew the ire of the Philippine government.

In a 1998 interview with Premier reporter Christine Spains, Dance opened up about what felt like a hellish ordeal to her. Here is the passage as it appeared in the former film magazine:

“Filming was plagued by outbreaks of malaria and hepatitis, and had to be shut down for several sick days. "It was very difficult," says Dance, now comfortably ensconced at a Beverly Hills lunch joint, where she gulped down a plate of Extra Rare Ahi "The place just smelled like cockroaches. There's no sewer in Manila, and people don't have anything. There (we saw) people with, like, no hands, no eyes, no teeth, we shot in a real (psychiatric) hospital, so the intakes would be interrupted by crying women. "Rats were everywhere."

When the country's president at the time, Joseph Estrada, drew attention to the Danes' comments, he brought down the old ban hammer. "She shouldn't be allowed to come here." he told CBS. "She shouldn't even be allowed to set foot in here." Her remarks were unnecessary. (It's worth noting that the 1998 CBS story deleted the qualifier "(We saw)" from Danes' quote, making her comment sound much worse than it was.)

Since the Danes ran rampant in the Philippines, she is persona non grata in the country and her films cannot be shown. There is no readily available evidence that the ban has been lifted, so Filipinos could not see the Danes' Primetime Emmy Award-winning performances in HBO's "Temple Grandin" and the Showtime series Homeland. Meanwhile, Dance is still getting roasted for once being a sheltered 19-year-old who spoke without empathy and whose worst career choice was probably turning down Kate Winslet's role in Titanic. The world is a profoundly stupid place.