Claire Dearing

Claire's sister Karen sends her sons, Zach and Gray Mitchell, to spend a few days at the park. Claire can't remember how old the boys are and hands them off to her assistant, Zara. She's busy with investors and the new attraction, the Indominus rex, a hybrid built to boost attendance.

Park owner Simon Masrani asks her to bring raptor trainer Owen Grady in to assess the paddock. The two have had one date, and it went badly: she showed up with a printed itinerary.

The Indominus escapes, and Zach and Gray are far away on a gyrosphere ride. Claire leaves the control room and goes after them with Owen, heels and all. She saves Owen from a pterosaur with a gunshot and finds the boys.

In the final showdown, with the raptors and soldiers beaten, she runs to the T. rex paddock, opens the gate, and lures the tyrannosaur with a flare to fight the Indominus. With the island evacuated, she returns the boys to their parents and decides to stay with Owen.

Three years later, Claire has become an activist. She runs the Dinosaur Protection Group, trying to save Isla Nublar's animals before the volcano kills them. Benjamin Lockwood, Hammond's old partner, and his aide Eli Mills promise a sanctuary if she helps track the animals down, Blue above all. Claire recruits Owen, now her ex, plus systems analyst Franklin Webb and vet Zia Rodriguez.

On the island, the mercenaries betray the group. Claire and Franklin escape the eruption inside a gyrosphere underwater, and she sneaks aboard the ship carrying the animals with Owen.

At Lockwood's estate, Mills auctions the dinosaurs off to buyers from around the world. Claire and Owen break out of their cell and end up running with Maisie, Lockwood's granddaughter, while the Indoraptor hunts the three of them through the house.

In the basement, a gas leak starts killing the caged animals. Claire has her hand on the button that opens the doors and doesn't press it: setting them loose on the mainland would be another kind of disaster. Maisie presses it for her. In the end, Claire and Owen leave with the girl.

Four years later, Claire is still rescuing dinosaurs from illegal breeders and living in hiding with Owen and Maisie at a cabin in the Sierra Nevada, keeping the girl away from people who want to study her. Maisie feels trapped and slips out; poachers take her along with Beta, Blue's baby.

Claire and Owen follow the trail to Malta and then, with pilot Kayla Watts, to Biosyn's valley in Italy. The plane goes down, and Claire faces a Therizinosaurus on her own. Inside, she and Ellie Sattler cut the power to stop Lewis Dodgson's escape. In the end, the family heads home with Beta.

Claire isn't in Crichton's novels. In early drafts she was named Whitney and had a smaller role. Colin Trevorrow picked the name Claire because it sounds hard on the surface but warm underneath. Her heels sparked debate at release; Bryce Dallas Howard defended them as a sign of how out of touch the character was with the jungle, and in the next movie she swaps them for boots before heading to the island.