High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Carrie Mathison, played by actress Claire Danes, is a fictional character and the protagonist of the American television drama/thriller series Homeland on Showtime, created by Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon. Carrie is a CIA officer who, while on assignment in Iraq, learned from a CIA asset that an American prisoner of war had been turned by al-Qaeda. After a U.S. Marine platoon sergeant named Nicholas Brody is rescued from captivity, Mathison believes that he is the POW described to her. Carrie`s investigation of Brody is complicated by her bipolar disorder and results in an obsession with her suspect.