LOS ANGELES?Director Mick Jackson likened Claire Danes? work on ?Temple Grandin,? for which she recently won a Best Actress in a Mini-Series or TV Movie Golden Globe, to ?a high-wire stunt.?

Five days before Globes night on Jan. 16, the British filmmaker animatedly discussed the HBO movie with a few journalists from around the world. The subject matter was eye-opening, he said, even for him?and he had seen a lot, this Directors Guild of America awardee for ?Tuesdays with Morrie? and HBO?s ?Live from Bagdad? and ?Indictment: The McMartin Trial.? He also won British Academy of Film and Television Arts trophies, for the miniseries ?A Very British Coup? (an International Emmy awardee as well) and for the drama series, ?Life Story? and ?Threads.?

Temple Grandin, on whose life and writings the movie is based, was diagnosed with autism/Aspergers syndrome as a child because she couldn?t speak or socialize. Now, Grandin, 63, is a full professor at Colorado State University, a best-selling author, and consultant to the US livestock industry. She has a PhD in Animal Science from the University of Illinois. And the aspect highlighted in the film: Over half the cattle in North America are handled in systems that she designed.

In her lectures, she often recalls visiting her aunt?s ranch, where she first felt the cattle panic when herded in a straight line, and relax when walking in circles?which became the basis for the systems. Asked once why she understood animals so well, she replied, ?The normal mind drops out details. An autism mind sees all of it, which is more like the animal mind, because animals think in pictures, smells, sounds?not words.?

Also noted for her work in autism advocacy, Grandin was listed in Time magazine?s 100 most influential people in the world (2010), in the ?Heroes? category.

As Danes accepted the Globe trophy, cameras cut to a jubilant Grandin in the audience, in her trademark rancher shirt. Five months ago, the movie had won seven Emmys, including Oustanding Made-for-TV Movie.

Not vegan

Jackson pointed out, ?Before Temple, nobody had said this is how it feels... moment to moment [for an] autistic person.? He certainly hadn?t heard of Grandin before he accepted the project, and neither had he encountered anyone like her. ?Then we met, in a coffee shop,? he recalled, chuckling. ?She couldn?t stop talking; I couldn?t stop asking questions. She had an amazing recall of every detail of everything that ever happened in her life.?

For all her procattle work, Grandin is not a vegetarian. ?She gets very cranky if she can?t have a good chunk of steak every day,? Jackson said. ?She?s quite clear about that. She said to me, ?We can?t outlaw meat-eating. What we can do is make sure we give cattle the respect that their [role]?they?re here for us to eat?demands and make every second of their lives, up until the moment that they?re stunned prior to slaughter, as peaceful as possible. I?m sure she saw in these animals a kind of metaphor for her own life [fraught] with fear.?

Jackson wanted Danes, no one else, for the role. ?Claire has a fierce seriousness about her, great focus as an artist and as a person, like Temple. In an actress you call it determination; in someone like Temple, you call it obsession. It?s a determined moving forward against the head wind. The world in Temple?s head and the one perceived by the people around her hardly ever coincide.?

First screening

The director recounted watching the finished movie with Grandin: ?We were in a viewing theater in HBO?lots of executives and producers watching the movie, watching her. [Afterwards] I asked, ?Temple, did you like it?? She said in that booming voice, ?It?s fantastic! You got everything right.? On my way home, the car phone rang; it was Temple, still going on about the movie. It became clear to me that she had downloaded the movie in her mind and was running it backwards and forwards, like a DVD, as we talked? amazing!?

Jackson was equally profuse with praise for his lead actress: ?Claire was determined to get this right. She invited Temple to her apartment in New York and asked her dramatic dialect coach and her movement coach to sit in. They talked for about six hours, videotaping the conversation. Claire had parts of it downloaded on her iPod, so she would have a kind of auto pilot in her head. It freed her up to be in the same psychic space as Temple; thus she didn?t have to worry about acting like Temple?not making eye contact, speaking with this loud voice. That automatically came.?

To think he took two hours on the phone to persuade her to come on board. ?She was in London and I was here in LA. I told her, ?You have to do this, you just have to.??

Even before the awards started coming, Jackson had been ?extremely happy? that Danes said yes. As for Grandin, in that screening room, as they viewed the freshly finished film about her life, she was heard to mutter, ?Yes, yes, that?s me... that?s me.?

"Temple Grandin" debuted on HBO in the United States in February 2010 and in Asia.