Zoe Kazan
Zoe Kazan
Zoe Swicord Kazan is an American actress and playwright. Kazan made her acting debut in Swordswallowers and Thin Menand later appeared in films such as The Savages, Revolutionary Roadand It's Complicated. She starred in happythankyoumoreplease, Meek's Cutoffand Ruby Sparks, for which she wrote the screenplay. In 2014, she starred in the film What If and the HBO mini-series Olive Kitteridge, for which she received an Emmy nomination. Kazan has also acted in several Broadway productions...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actress
Date of Birth9 September 1983
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I find playwriting really painful. I love it, or I wouldn't do it, but I don't love the theater as much as I love movies.
When you're in the editing room, as a director, you get the opportunity to look at your work. As a writer, you can rewrite. But as an actor, unless you're watching playback, you really rely on the director to help you.
I took a writing class in college, liked it, and my first year out of school I couldn't get a job, so I wrote a play.
I've always really been interested in the Pygmalion myth and both what it has to say about creativity and what it has to say about relationships between men and women.
I think from my earliest childhood, I liked to tell stories, put on plays and write things. It's funny to think of it as an "artistic bug" because I didn't necessarily want to be an artist. It's just who I was and how I communicate.
My grandmother told me: "We all dated lots of different boys because no one was having sex or kissing. It was just going out for sodas and getting to know people. It didn't seem like there was a threat." I think now we have more ideas of people having premarital and unprotected sex.
I feel lucky to receive such critical attention and praise when you're in a show that's going to last a month, it's just easier when audiences are more receptive. I've done two new shows this year, so I'm always excited to work on something a little older, traditional and structured.
There aren't a lot of movies being made about women, period. Most of the time, the roles that are available are the sidekick, the friend, the girlfriend or the wife, and they just aren't that interesting.
So often you're asked to play impossibly perfect version of yourself on screen that it's nice to get to bring in those parts that you think aren't as worth looking at.
Too often in the theatre people can't wait for intermission to get some chocolate or something. But with Come Back, Little Sheba I just hope people leave feeling like they've spent a really good two-hours in that house with us.
I love to walk around New York. Honestly, that's like the best thing, to walk over to Park Slope and go visit my friend Betty and take her dog out in the park or go walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. I really dig being outside and getting to see everybody in the street.
When I look back, I can say that the summer when I was 19 was a formative time for me. But at the time I just thought I was making tofu every night for dinner and going to work.
My schedule is completely different doing a play than it is doing a movie, and I actually think it's a much harder schedule because you've got to do it eight times a week and you've got to do it good eight times a week and with different kinds of audiences who are cold or drunk or tired, whatever it is.
People really do make the assumption that I had some weirdo Hollywood upbringing, but my parents are incredibly down-to-earth people who worked really hard to raise us in a way that was health.