Claudia

In New Orleans, Louis pulls 14-year-old Claudia from a burning boarding house. Burned and close to death, she's turned by Lestat at Louis's request.

Claudia adapts fast but acts on impulse. She kills a young man named Charlie by accident, and Lestat makes her watch his body burn. Later a storm washes up the bodies from a string of killings she'd been hiding.

Claudia sets out into the world and meets the vampire Bruce, who abuses her. Years later she returns to take Louis away. When Lestat beats Louis, she nurses him, and the two decide to finish off their maker.

Claudia talks Lestat into throwing a Mardi Gras ball and poisons the guests he'll feed on. Lestat collapses, and Louis cuts his throat.

After the war, Claudia and Louis roam Europe looking for other vampires. In Romania they find a refugee community and a feral vampire whose maker, Daciana, would rather burn herself than leave with them. In Paris they arrive unannounced and the Théâtre des Vampires keeps watch on them until they're invited in. In the coven she gets hazed and is cast as a baby for the next 50 years. She befriends the dressmaker Madeleine, and Louis turns her.

Santiago finds Claudia's diaries, spreads what she wrote and stages a mock trial where Lestat shows up alive as a witness. She and Madeleine are sentenced and die together in the sun. Louis saves the diaries from the theater fire.

In the 1994 film, Claudia is an orphan Louis finds during a New Orleans plague. Lestat turns her, and she grows up inside without ever aging outside.

Furious, she poisons Lestat with tainted blood, cuts his throat and helps Louis dump the body in a swamp. Lestat comes back just as they're leaving, Louis sets him on fire, the blaze spreads through the French Quarter and they escape to Europe. In Paris, Claudia demands that Louis turn a woman named Madeleine. Armand's coven blames Claudia for the attack on Lestat, and she dies in the sun beside Madeleine.

Kirsten Dunst was ten when she tested for Claudia and earned a Golden Globe nomination for the part. In the AMC series, Bailey Bass plays Claudia in season one and Delainey Hayles takes over from season two on. In the book she's turned at five; in the show, at 14.