Claire Dearing in the Jurassic Park Franchise: Who She Is and Who Plays Her

Claire Dearing is the woman who runs the Jurassic World theme park on Isla Nublar, and Bryce Dallas Howard plays her in all three of her films. She first appears in Jurassic World (2015), directed by Colin Trevorrow, which is set twenty-two years after the original disaster. The park is open and busy, and she is the person responsible for keeping it that way.

She is also the aunt of the teenage brothers Zach and Gray, who are sent to visit her and find that she is too busy to spend time with them. When the park's scientists build a new, bigger attraction, a genetically engineered hybrid called the Indominus rex, Claire asks Owen Grady to check its enclosure for safety. Owen is an ex-Navy animal behaviorist who trains a small pack of Velociraptors on the island, and the two of them become the franchise's central pairing from that point on. You can read more about him on the owen grady profile.

The credits list her as Claire in the 2015 film and as Claire Dearing in jurassic world fallen kingdom and jurassic world dominion. Howard is billed second, behind Chris Pratt, in all three. For the full ensemble, see the jurassic park cast page, or the wider list of jurassic park characters.

Claire's closest relationship is with Owen Grady, and the films build it around dinosaurs rather than romance alone. She asks him to assess the Indominus paddock in 2015, he helps her find the boys, and the two end that film deciding to stay together. In the two sequels they work as a team, with Claire running the campaign to save the animals and Owen handling the animals themselves.

Her next most important bond is with Maisie Lockwood, the granddaughter of Benjamin Lockwood, who turns out to be a clone of his dead daughter. Dominion establishes that Maisie was created from Charlotte Lockwood's DNA, and Claire and Owen raise her in a mountain cabin. See the maisie lockwood profile for her side of that story.

Claire is also the aunt of Zach and Gray in the first film, and her assistant Zara dies during the aviary attack. Her allies in Fallen Kingdom include Franklin Webb and Zia Rodriguez, who helps save Blue with a transfusion. Her enemies include Vic Hoskins, who sees the Indominus crisis as a chance to use the raptors as weapons, and Eli Mills, who kills Lockwood and plans the auction. In Dominion, Franklin helps her group get into the Malta black market, and a Quetzalcoatlus attack brings down Kayla Watts' plane. Owen, Claire and Kayla survive on their own before they reunite. The raptor Blue connects all of this, and you can follow her through the blue raptor profile.

In my opinion, Claire's best moment is freeing the old Tyrannosaurus rex in Jurassic World (2015), because it turns her from a person managing a crisis into the person who ends it. The T. rex fights the Indominus alongside Blue before the Mosasaurus finishes the job. It could be argued that this is the franchise's best callback to Jurassic Park (1993), where a T. rex also arrives at the last moment and saves the survivors from the raptors in the visitor center.

My second pick is her choice in Fallen Kingdom to join the rescue effort tied to Eli Mills. Claire starts the film campaigning to protect the dinosaurs, and that decision drags her back to a collapsing island and later into the mansion sequence, where the Indoraptor hunts Owen, Claire and Maisie.

Third is the Malta black market in Dominion, where Claire and Owen work with Franklin and a raid by Barry Sembène's team turns into chaos as animals break loose. It is a messy set piece and not a perfect one, but it shows Claire as an operator who can move through a world of loose dinosaurs, a long way from the park manager of 2015.