Claire Fisher

Infobox SFU character
Title=Claire Fisher


Name=Claire Simone Fisher
Age=25
Birth=March 13, 1983
Death=February 11, 2085
Place=Los Angeles, California
Profession=College student, Photographer
Actor=Lauren Ambrose

Claire Fisher is a fictional character on the HBO television series "Six Feet Under" played by Lauren Ambrose.

Character biography

Claire Simone Fisher (1983 – 2085) was born on March 13, 1983 to Nathaniel and Ruth Fisher of Los Angeles. She is their youngest child.

Claire is rebellious and into drugs, photography, and bad relationships. Her outlook on life is typically adolescent, often being negative and questioning the world, but constantly striving for meaning in her life. She is the most creative in the family, being inspired by those closest (such as her family, Aunt Sarah, Billy). She is also the only member of the Fisher Family who doesn't like peanut butter, according to her mother Ruth. At one time dating the bitter high school student Gabe, she engaged briefly in a complex relationship with Brenda's brother Billy. While studying art at LAC-Arts College, she slept with a crematory employee, Phil, but he did not want an exclusive relationship. She then became pregnant via fellow student Russell, whom she had dated even though she suspected he was gay; she broke up with him when she discovered he had slept with their professor, Olivier. She had an abortion, which led to mixed feelings regarding her decision until she imagined her sister-in-law Lisa in the hereafter, promising to take care of Claire's aborted son. She was initially abrupt and unsympathetic when Russell burst into tears upon hearing about the abortion, but later apologized and peacefully parted aways with him (and by extension the Arts School). Claire had a casual relationship with a young man named Jimmy; she then became infatuated with a student named Edie, but after flirting with the idea of lesbianism being "easier" and having intimate contact with Edie, Claire realized she would always be heterosexual.

Soon after her art gallery opening, she left art school after being abandoned by her friends and the faux reality of her education. Claire tried again with Billy, but broke up with him for good after finding him difficult to deal with, a complication from him not taking his medication. She subsequently dated Ted Fairwell, a lawyer she met while doing temp work. Initially she felt alienated by his conservative beliefs and she lashed out violently at him in the aftermath of Nate's death, but he won her over with his kindness and dry wit.

Like most of her family, Claire has visions of dead people as well as vivid fantasies. However, unlike the other characters, her visions of her father Nathaniel, and later her brother Nate, are mostly positive and encouraging. To reinforce this positive image, she frequently imagines her father in casual clothing rather than in a suit and tie.

Claire's future and death

In the final episode, she moves to New York City even though she has lost out on the photography job that was the original reason for the move. In a final, flashforward section depicting Claire on the way to New York, her journey is interspersed with sequences showing her future and the future of her relatives: Claire will have a successful career as a commercial photographer, photojournalist, and educator. Although Claire and Ted part ways when Claire moves to New York, they will reunite and marry following Ruth's death in 2025. Claire will begin teaching photography as a faculty member at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 2018, earning tenure in 2028. Claire would have no children, though she would live a long, rich, and eventful life, eventually outliving her husband and all of her close relatives. She dies in 2085, at age 101, blind from cataracts while living in Manhattan. The very last images of this final episode bring us back to the fictional reality, the camera focusing momentarily on Claire in her car before panning away.