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 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.
Anytime that I've felt uninspired, I don't force myself to sit down and write. I only do it when I feel the impulse.
When I'm writing, I look like a fool because the parts are moving through me and I'm crying and laughing and making faces.
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.
Sometimes I feel that the people I'm writing are more real to me than the people around me. When you take that imaginative leap, you're living so much in that world.
I think film writing, you're thinking in pictures, and stage writing, you're thinking in dialogue. In film writing, it's also, you only get so many words, so everything has to earn its place in a really economical way. I think for stage writing, you have more leeway.
But my family's really close and I was interested in what Mommy and Daddy did for a living. So when Mommy and Daddy had a script that wasn't totally age inappropriate, they would let me read it. And we would talk about it.
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.
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.
Writing-wise, I like to have a lot of things on the burners at once, because when I hit a wall, I like to move on to the thing I haven't hit a wall on.
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.
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.
I grew up in L.A., and I don't think I've seen L.A. onscreen in a way that felt real to me. There are definitely movies, but they are few and far between.
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.