Hugh Dancy Shares Secret to 20-Year Relationship With Claire Danes

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Hugh Dancy Shares Secret to 20-Year Relationship With Claire Danes

Hugh Dancy is closing the case on this secret.

As the Law & Order star celebrates his 20th anniversary with wife Claire Danes, he reflected on what makes their marriage so strong.

"I picked right," Dancy told E! News in an exclusive interview. "I could give you a lot. It would just sound cliché, but I mean, it's all true: care and consideration, all the rest of it. Time takes on different meanings as you pass the big milestones in 5, 10 years."

At the end of the day, he emphasized, "We're just doing our best."

But the 51-year-old—who met Danes in 2006 before tying the knot three years later—also knows what's needed in a relationship is case by case.

"I don't think there's a single secret that you can pass on to anybody else," he added. "You never know what's the truth of somebody else's relationship."

Along with celebrating his 20th anniversary this year, the actor is also stepping into his sixth season of the NBC procedural drama as Executive Assistant District Attorney Nolan Price.

"The writers are kind of continuing to work on him as somebody who wrestles with his own purist sense of morals, morality within that job, and then at other times he will get a bug," he explained. "This is when I particularly enjoy playing him. He's just, 'I'm taking this person down, whatever the circumstances."

As for what else we can expect from season 26 of the long-running procedural? He teased, "We'll just have to find out."

Jenny Anderson/Getty Images for Netflix

Meanwhile, Danes—who shares kids Cyrus, 13, Rowan, 7 and Shay, 3, with Dancy—couldn't ask for a better scene partner.

"Hugh and I are very lucky," she explained on the Good Hang with Amy Poehler podcast in January. "We're well-matched humans. I think our parenting styles are pretty level and equal as well."

And when it comes to her husband, she simply added, "He's a swell dude."

As fans wait to see more of Price in Law & Order on Oct. 8 at 10:00 p.m. ET, keep reading for more TV shows to add to your must-watch list.

- Reporting by Amanda Champagne-Meadows 

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