Zoe Kazan
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MulletProof
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Didn't know she had a thread here.. guess because it's a bit inactive.
Love her style in the last two posts by dajrekshn in the previous page. More personal and less.. Williamsburg-esque, which is probably one of the reasons why I'm so on the fence with this girl since seeing her in The Exploding Girl.. I just found her acting (and the entire movie) insufferable. But adding more dimension to her thanks to this thread does help to have a better perspective.. she looks infinitely better as a blond and I love her sense of proportion seen in the 2011 pictures.. not afraid to go for non-trendy lengths or volumes, like this, middle of maxi-skirt/sheer trend and she's channeling Prada 2004 like nobody's business.
Love her style in the last two posts by dajrekshn in the previous page. More personal and less.. Williamsburg-esque, which is probably one of the reasons why I'm so on the fence with this girl since seeing her in The Exploding Girl.. I just found her acting (and the entire movie) insufferable. But adding more dimension to her thanks to this thread does help to have a better perspective.. she looks infinitely better as a blond and I love her sense of proportion seen in the 2011 pictures.. not afraid to go for non-trendy lengths or volumes, like this, middle of maxi-skirt/sheer trend and she's channeling Prada 2004 like nobody's business.
The dress is like icing on a cuteness cake.
D
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Thanks for those videos 
You could tell she was nervous but she was really cute. I also find it pretty random and funny that Paul Dano has a crush on Katy Perry 
You could tell she was nervous but she was really cute. I also find it pretty random and funny that Paul Dano has a crush on Katy Perry 
miss_catherine
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I'm surprised (well, maybe not entirely) that this thread hasn't been updated with stuff about the film she wrote and stars in, Ruby Sparks. Also starring Paul Dano: so lovely seeing them on-screen together. Anyway, it wasn't a mindblowing masterpiece or anything but I found it enjoyable, occasionally laugh-out-loud funny and really quite moving, especially in the final scenes.
So, I thought I'd shared this interview and see if I could spark some interest (see what I did there, ha
"Zoe Kazan: 'How I became an imaginary girlfriend'
The granddaughter of On the Waterfront director Elia Kazan on turning her own life into a romcom… and taking the starring role
There are two large sofas in the room at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Knightsbridge, west London. A couple of chairs, too, pushed against the walls. Zoe Kazan opts for the floor.
"You're either a floor person or a furniture person," says the actress and screenwriter, 29, Los Angeles-born and New York-based. She's in London to promote an offbeat drama, Ruby Sparks, which has just opened in UK cinemas. Kazan wrote the script and takes the title role in the film, playing a freakily idealised girlfriend who is imagined and somehow made real by a lonely novelist, played by Little Miss Sunshine actor Paul Dano.
Off screen, Dano is Kazan's boyfriend, and on screen – both of them otherworldly in appearance, spindly framed, with faces that are pale and child-like – the pair share an intriguing chemistry. "My friend always says that if Paul and I had babies they'd be like aliens. Big eyes, long fingers. They'd look just like ET."
You'll probably recognise her name. Kazan is the granddaughter of On the Waterfront director Elia Kazan, who died when she was 20. Her parents are both screenwriters; they were horrified, apparently, when she came home one day and revealed she no longer wanted to be a writer, like she'd always said. "I told them, 'I'm going to be an actor!' And they were freaked out. Upset, really against it." Now that she's written a screenplay, belatedly taking up the family game, "they're relieved".
Since Kazan says you're a floor person or a furniture person, I wonder if there's a feeling in Hollywood that you're either an actor person or a writer person. In the past, she's had supporting roles in 2008's Revolutionary Road and Me and Orson Welles, and been in Broadway plays. Did anybody roll their eyes at her when she started touting a first screenplay? "I kinda rolled my eyes at me. I think I had more circumspection about it than anyone else. So you wrote a script for you and your boyfriend. Oh, really…"
Initially, she says, she didn't imagine herself playing Ruby. She started writing the film the week after she first moved into Dano's New York home, in 2010. "His studio apartment, a bad idea for any couple. No walls. Oh my God, it was terrible."
The film's central idea – the ability of Dano's character to manipulate Kazan's by writing behaviour for her on a typewriter – grew from her "wondering if I was now defined by this person I was living with. We were in a serious relationship before but here was this new step, and I think I felt claustrophobic. There's a lot of what I was feeling at that moment in the film."
What did Dano think of the script? "He asked me if I was writing it for the two of us to be in. And I thought that was a good idea.""
guardian.co.uk
So, I thought I'd shared this interview and see if I could spark some interest (see what I did there, ha
"Zoe Kazan: 'How I became an imaginary girlfriend'
The granddaughter of On the Waterfront director Elia Kazan on turning her own life into a romcom… and taking the starring role
There are two large sofas in the room at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Knightsbridge, west London. A couple of chairs, too, pushed against the walls. Zoe Kazan opts for the floor.
"You're either a floor person or a furniture person," says the actress and screenwriter, 29, Los Angeles-born and New York-based. She's in London to promote an offbeat drama, Ruby Sparks, which has just opened in UK cinemas. Kazan wrote the script and takes the title role in the film, playing a freakily idealised girlfriend who is imagined and somehow made real by a lonely novelist, played by Little Miss Sunshine actor Paul Dano.
Off screen, Dano is Kazan's boyfriend, and on screen – both of them otherworldly in appearance, spindly framed, with faces that are pale and child-like – the pair share an intriguing chemistry. "My friend always says that if Paul and I had babies they'd be like aliens. Big eyes, long fingers. They'd look just like ET."
You'll probably recognise her name. Kazan is the granddaughter of On the Waterfront director Elia Kazan, who died when she was 20. Her parents are both screenwriters; they were horrified, apparently, when she came home one day and revealed she no longer wanted to be a writer, like she'd always said. "I told them, 'I'm going to be an actor!' And they were freaked out. Upset, really against it." Now that she's written a screenplay, belatedly taking up the family game, "they're relieved".
Since Kazan says you're a floor person or a furniture person, I wonder if there's a feeling in Hollywood that you're either an actor person or a writer person. In the past, she's had supporting roles in 2008's Revolutionary Road and Me and Orson Welles, and been in Broadway plays. Did anybody roll their eyes at her when she started touting a first screenplay? "I kinda rolled my eyes at me. I think I had more circumspection about it than anyone else. So you wrote a script for you and your boyfriend. Oh, really…"
Initially, she says, she didn't imagine herself playing Ruby. She started writing the film the week after she first moved into Dano's New York home, in 2010. "His studio apartment, a bad idea for any couple. No walls. Oh my God, it was terrible."
The film's central idea – the ability of Dano's character to manipulate Kazan's by writing behaviour for her on a typewriter – grew from her "wondering if I was now defined by this person I was living with. We were in a serious relationship before but here was this new step, and I think I felt claustrophobic. There's a lot of what I was feeling at that moment in the film."
What did Dano think of the script? "He asked me if I was writing it for the two of us to be in. And I thought that was a good idea.""
guardian.co.uk
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miss_catherine
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And another, just for the heck of it. I'll probably share a few images of her in the film, etc. The styling of her character in the film is pretty perfect. Not particularly my taste (although I did have dress envy at least twice) but perfect for the character.
"Ruby Sparks’s Zoe Kazan on Woody Allen, Elizabeth Taylor, and Working With Boyfriend Paul Dano
By Bruce Handy
Zoe Kazan is the star and writer of Ruby Sparks, a new film that could be classified, for shorthand purposes, as a romantic comedy, but which is also a movie about romantic comedy. The story: a young and formerly successful novelist (Paul Dano, Kazan’s real-life boyfriend; they met on the set of the excellent, not-widely-enough-seen Western Meek’s Crossing) is suffering from writer’s block. His breakthrough comes when he conjures a young woman character and begins writing her story, only to find her, one morning, materialized in his apartment. Naturally, she being a literal dream girl (though not necessarily a manic pixie dream girl; Kazan dislikes the label), they fall in love. Naturally, this being a film, and a funny, smart, and enjoyable one, complications ensue. It’s Pygmalion and Galatea, set in contemporary, neurotic Los Angeles, next door to Greenberg, a neighborhood over from New Girl.
The directors are Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. This is their second film, following Little Miss Sunshine. Italso stars Antonio Banderas, Annette Bening, Steve Coogan, and Elliott Gould. Kazan, 28, you should know from Revolutionary Road, It’s Complicated, The Exploding Girl, and HBO’s Bored to Death. She’s also been all over Broadway and off-Broadway, and is the author of two plays herself.
Bruce Handy: I was curious what you had in mind when you were writing Ruby Sparks. There’s a lot going on, and I took it in part as a kind of commentary on movie romances and the whole notion of “dream girls” in movies.
Zoe Kazan: Well, I don’t mind it being read like that. I was thinking about the way women are sometimes portrayed in the movies, and in particular I was thinking about when men write women—even when they write them really well, like in Annie Hall. That girl seems totally real to me, like a person in the world. But then I start to ask myself: does she feel real to me because I’m living in the post-Woody Allen world? Because he put that type of woman outthere and now she seems real to me? And was he reflecting on the woman he loved and immortalizing her? Or was he writing the script for Diane Keaton to then enter [and take over]? It’s just such a curious thing to me the way that we—and I think we all do it, it’s not just the purview of men or of male writers—start our relationships with an idea of the other person and then they slowly become more real to us. That kind of thing was definitely on my mind.
It’s interesting you bring up Woody Allen. I was also thinking of Midnight in Paris when I was watching Ruby Sparks in that I love how you never explain the “magic” behind Ruby’s appearance. You just let it happen, with such nonchalance. Was there any pressure from collaborators, or from yourself, to explain it?
No, that’s one of the things I really love about Jonathan and Valerie. From the very beginning they got the metaphor that I was talking about. We were very much on the same page about what kind of movie we wanted to make. For me, having a gypsy curse or a shooting star—that kind of explanation is actually no explanation at all. It gives the logical viewer something logical to hold on to. One thing I think is that a movie like Big is a movie for children, so you need that explanation; a child needs that explanation to hold on to. Hopefully, this movie deals with more adult themes, and I think grown-ups can handle that leap of faith. It allows us to move more quickly into talking about what the real substance of the movie is. Groundhog Day is perfect example of that in a movie—when you don’t have to have an explanation of what is going on.
You didn’t want to get stuck in some third act where you’re chasing down the gypsy or whatever.
I’m cursed! I’m cursed! Goddamn you! [Laughs.]
Was it hard working with Paul Dano in the sense of being on set together all day and then bringing the movie home with you at night?
We didn’t necessarily bring our work home with us. I think that we’ve been together long enough now that we’re used to, if not shaking off the day, at least living with the shadow of the day together. What was difficult was to spend so much time during the day together and not have it be about the relationship. Most people who are spending 24 hours of the day together are on their honeymoon, or a vacation, or something—they’re choosing to spend all that time together. But with this it was like, “Wow, whether you like it or not, whether you’re getting along together or not, you’re spending all that time together.” At work we never had a problem, but driving home together at night after a long day things could get contentious over stupid stuff, like what to put on theradio.
People probably ask this all the time, but do you have a favorite film of your grandfather’s, director Elia Kazan?
I used to say America, America but, in recent years, Splendor in the Grass and East of Eden have been speaking to me.
What is it about Splendor in the Grass [a film this writer finds a tad over-heated] in particular?
I just really love William Inge [the playwright, who wrote the screenplay for Splendor in the Grass; Kazan made her Broadway debut in a 2008 revival of Inge’s Come Back, Little Sheba], and I think that the story is so beautiful. The performances are amazing. Ithink that Natalie Wood was actually kind of undervalued as an actress andshe’s just incredible in that film. That scene when she’s in the bathtub is insane! And, of course, Warren Beatty is so beautiful.
Growing up, were there performances that got you thinking about doing this yourself?
I think Ingrid Bergman was the first actress who I really fell in love with and felt so moved by. I remember seeing her in Notorious for the first time and feeling like she was so transformed from who she was in Casablanca. Here’s the other thing: recently Paul and I watched A Place in the Sun, which I hadn’t seen since I was a kid. I remember being young and thinking that Elizabeth Taylor was so amazing. Watching it again, it’s not that Elizabeth Taylor isn’t amazing, but, all of the sudden, Shelley Winters just seems like obviously the far superior actress, and the job she did in the movie far, far more difficult. I realized how much, as a child, I was drawn to beauty. Notthat I only loved beautiful actresses—I remember watching All About Eve with Thelma Ritter, and I totally worshiped her—but it’s funny how different my values have become, and how much talent and the ability to transform seem so much more important to me than beauty. Children like flashy objects, you know?
Well, I don’t think anyone was ever more beautiful in a movie than Elizabeth Taylor was in that one. She ravishes the camera.
Paul had never seen the movie before and when it was over he was like, “Shelley Winters is so beautiful,” and I was like, “You’re the only man in the world to watch this movie and say that instead of Elizabeth Taylor!” I just love that about Paul. [Laughs.]"
vanityfair.com
"Ruby Sparks’s Zoe Kazan on Woody Allen, Elizabeth Taylor, and Working With Boyfriend Paul Dano
By Bruce Handy
Zoe Kazan is the star and writer of Ruby Sparks, a new film that could be classified, for shorthand purposes, as a romantic comedy, but which is also a movie about romantic comedy. The story: a young and formerly successful novelist (Paul Dano, Kazan’s real-life boyfriend; they met on the set of the excellent, not-widely-enough-seen Western Meek’s Crossing) is suffering from writer’s block. His breakthrough comes when he conjures a young woman character and begins writing her story, only to find her, one morning, materialized in his apartment. Naturally, she being a literal dream girl (though not necessarily a manic pixie dream girl; Kazan dislikes the label), they fall in love. Naturally, this being a film, and a funny, smart, and enjoyable one, complications ensue. It’s Pygmalion and Galatea, set in contemporary, neurotic Los Angeles, next door to Greenberg, a neighborhood over from New Girl.
The directors are Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. This is their second film, following Little Miss Sunshine. Italso stars Antonio Banderas, Annette Bening, Steve Coogan, and Elliott Gould. Kazan, 28, you should know from Revolutionary Road, It’s Complicated, The Exploding Girl, and HBO’s Bored to Death. She’s also been all over Broadway and off-Broadway, and is the author of two plays herself.
Bruce Handy: I was curious what you had in mind when you were writing Ruby Sparks. There’s a lot going on, and I took it in part as a kind of commentary on movie romances and the whole notion of “dream girls” in movies.
Zoe Kazan: Well, I don’t mind it being read like that. I was thinking about the way women are sometimes portrayed in the movies, and in particular I was thinking about when men write women—even when they write them really well, like in Annie Hall. That girl seems totally real to me, like a person in the world. But then I start to ask myself: does she feel real to me because I’m living in the post-Woody Allen world? Because he put that type of woman outthere and now she seems real to me? And was he reflecting on the woman he loved and immortalizing her? Or was he writing the script for Diane Keaton to then enter [and take over]? It’s just such a curious thing to me the way that we—and I think we all do it, it’s not just the purview of men or of male writers—start our relationships with an idea of the other person and then they slowly become more real to us. That kind of thing was definitely on my mind.
It’s interesting you bring up Woody Allen. I was also thinking of Midnight in Paris when I was watching Ruby Sparks in that I love how you never explain the “magic” behind Ruby’s appearance. You just let it happen, with such nonchalance. Was there any pressure from collaborators, or from yourself, to explain it?
No, that’s one of the things I really love about Jonathan and Valerie. From the very beginning they got the metaphor that I was talking about. We were very much on the same page about what kind of movie we wanted to make. For me, having a gypsy curse or a shooting star—that kind of explanation is actually no explanation at all. It gives the logical viewer something logical to hold on to. One thing I think is that a movie like Big is a movie for children, so you need that explanation; a child needs that explanation to hold on to. Hopefully, this movie deals with more adult themes, and I think grown-ups can handle that leap of faith. It allows us to move more quickly into talking about what the real substance of the movie is. Groundhog Day is perfect example of that in a movie—when you don’t have to have an explanation of what is going on.
You didn’t want to get stuck in some third act where you’re chasing down the gypsy or whatever.
I’m cursed! I’m cursed! Goddamn you! [Laughs.]
Was it hard working with Paul Dano in the sense of being on set together all day and then bringing the movie home with you at night?
We didn’t necessarily bring our work home with us. I think that we’ve been together long enough now that we’re used to, if not shaking off the day, at least living with the shadow of the day together. What was difficult was to spend so much time during the day together and not have it be about the relationship. Most people who are spending 24 hours of the day together are on their honeymoon, or a vacation, or something—they’re choosing to spend all that time together. But with this it was like, “Wow, whether you like it or not, whether you’re getting along together or not, you’re spending all that time together.” At work we never had a problem, but driving home together at night after a long day things could get contentious over stupid stuff, like what to put on theradio.
People probably ask this all the time, but do you have a favorite film of your grandfather’s, director Elia Kazan?
I used to say America, America but, in recent years, Splendor in the Grass and East of Eden have been speaking to me.
What is it about Splendor in the Grass [a film this writer finds a tad over-heated] in particular?
I just really love William Inge [the playwright, who wrote the screenplay for Splendor in the Grass; Kazan made her Broadway debut in a 2008 revival of Inge’s Come Back, Little Sheba], and I think that the story is so beautiful. The performances are amazing. Ithink that Natalie Wood was actually kind of undervalued as an actress andshe’s just incredible in that film. That scene when she’s in the bathtub is insane! And, of course, Warren Beatty is so beautiful.
Growing up, were there performances that got you thinking about doing this yourself?
I think Ingrid Bergman was the first actress who I really fell in love with and felt so moved by. I remember seeing her in Notorious for the first time and feeling like she was so transformed from who she was in Casablanca. Here’s the other thing: recently Paul and I watched A Place in the Sun, which I hadn’t seen since I was a kid. I remember being young and thinking that Elizabeth Taylor was so amazing. Watching it again, it’s not that Elizabeth Taylor isn’t amazing, but, all of the sudden, Shelley Winters just seems like obviously the far superior actress, and the job she did in the movie far, far more difficult. I realized how much, as a child, I was drawn to beauty. Notthat I only loved beautiful actresses—I remember watching All About Eve with Thelma Ritter, and I totally worshiped her—but it’s funny how different my values have become, and how much talent and the ability to transform seem so much more important to me than beauty. Children like flashy objects, you know?
Well, I don’t think anyone was ever more beautiful in a movie than Elizabeth Taylor was in that one. She ravishes the camera.
Paul had never seen the movie before and when it was over he was like, “Shelley Winters is so beautiful,” and I was like, “You’re the only man in the world to watch this movie and say that instead of Elizabeth Taylor!” I just love that about Paul. [Laughs.]"
vanityfair.com
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White Lung
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Honor - Front Row - Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Spring 2014
'12 Years a Slave' Premieres in Toronto
"Prisoners" Premiere - Arrivals - 2013 Toronto International Film Festival
"The F Word" Press Conference - 2013 Toronto International Film Festival
"F Word" Portraits - 2013 Toronto International Film Festival
zimbio
'12 Years a Slave' Premieres in Toronto
"Prisoners" Premiere - Arrivals - 2013 Toronto International Film Festival
"The F Word" Press Conference - 2013 Toronto International Film Festival
"F Word" Portraits - 2013 Toronto International Film Festival
zimbio
