We're Hangin' With ... Zooey Deschanel

Young Zooey Deschanel grew up on film sets with her parents, actress Mary Jo Deschanel (The Right Stuff, The Patriot) and her talented cinematographer dad Caleb Deschanel (The Patriot, Anna and the King, The Right Stuff, Fly Away Home). She was in Almost Famous and now she plays Jenny Herk, a sullen teen whose selfish dad (Stanley Tucci) is a shady businessman in the wacky ensemble comedy Big Trouble (PG-13). Watch for her this summer in The Good Girl with Jennifer Aniston and Abandon with Katie Holmes.

Zooey is a real chameleon. She was a straight-haired dark blonde in the film but when we met with her in L.A., she was a petite, wavy dark brunette wearing a cute red and white striped sweater and red glasses to match. Zooey is very funny and bright. She doesn't just sit and answer questions, she interacts with journalists. Commenting on one male journalist's jeans and tee "I remember saying to my mom that all guys had closets of like the same tee-shirt and the same jeans. What do boys' closets look like? I'll bet it's all the same clothes".

AGW: There is a squirt gun game played in the film. Had you ever heard of it?

Zooey: Killer? Yeah. I went to college for six months at Northwestern and they played this game. I actually played a trick because I wasn't involved in the game. This girl in my dorm was totally obsessed. She would never leave her room because you weren't allowed (in the game) to shoot people in dorm rooms. I somehow got ahold of somebody's squirt gun. I waited for her to leave and squirted her when she went to the bathroom and she was devastated because she hadn't squirted the person she was assigned to yet. Then I revealed that I wasn't really involved. You get somebody's name out of a hat and you have to squirt them before the person who gets your name squirts you. As far as I know they are still playing.

AGW: Why did you leave college after so short a time?

Zooey: I got a movie. Almost Famous. I did my first movie Mumford my senior year in high school and then I was auditioning on Christmas and Spring break. I had planned to go back afterwards and I was going to put all my stuff in storage and then I just made this snap decision and shipped everything back to L.A. for an enormous amount of money. I was like 'okay, let me see what this is like' and I just kept working. I have six movies coming out this year. It's a mix of comedy and drama. I just want to choose the most interesting roles. Getting a role is kind of like boyfriends, you have to want them and they want you at the same time.

AGW: You have a hugely talented mom and dad. Do you think acting comes naturally or would you not have chosen it if you had had other parents?

Zooey: Thank you. Well, it wasn't being on sets as a kid (that hooked her). I was like 'this is boring and horrible'. I think I wanted to do theater when I was little, not so much film. I was always performing. Once I started working myself it became a whole other thing and I wasn't bored on sets. When you have nothing to do, craft service (the food people) is the only interesting thing about it. You watch one take of something then they do it 20 more times.

AGW: Because your dad is such a great cinematographer, are you interested in photography?

Zooey: Yeah. In fact that's one of my hobbies. I take photographs. I got a camera for Christmas and I have a few old pinhole cameras. My dad takes me out and we go take pictures together.

AGW: Would you ever like to do a film with your parents?

Zooey: I would like to. At first I was like 'nooooo'. I think there is a casualness in the way you deal with your parents and they with you, that might undermine the set. It's like (whiney voice) 'moooom, daaaaad. I don't wanna do that'. I sometimes feel like I'm 12 years old again with I get together with them. I'm the little one and my older sister, who used to tell me she was from Neptune and had come to kill me, scared me a little bit. They are both great and talented but it would be a challenge.

AGW: You've got a lot of really good put down lines in Big Trouble. Was any of that ad-libbed?

Zooey: It was all scripted. I never made any attempt to go off script. You are pretty much aware if a director is game for that. I wouldn't want to waste film improv-ing when they don't want that. Barry (Sonnenfeld, her director) has a master comic vision of how comedy works and he wants it very fast-paced. There wasn't a lot of experimenting.

AGW: What did you learn about comedy?

Zooey: Drier plus faster equals funnier. That was the formula. I think comic timing is innate. It was great to watch the comic actors work. You get an idea of pace.

AGW: What would be your ideal things to do on a date?

Zooey: I like to go see old movies. And I like to be able to talk to the person to get to know them so we could go to dinner…. Gaa, dinner and a movie. Or like bowling. Bowling is fun. I'm a horrible bowler. I do the 'granny' bowl. Ice skating is a good date. Excuse me while I do my triple axle!

AGW: What music are you into?

Zooey: I have very eclectic taste in music. I like Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald and old jazz singers and I also like The Kinks and The Zombies and The Beach Boys, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles. I like old Motown. I grew us listening to oldies.

AGW: For Big Trouble, were you sent the whole script or just your part?

Zooey: Sometimes they don't send them out for security. Like the Men in Black franchise for example. It's interesting the movies that you can't get the whole script for. Like Almost Famous, we got generic scenes. They wouldn't release any of it. But Big Trouble was a book already so people could just go out and buy the book and know pretty much what happened. I got the whole script. I couldn't keep track of all the characters when I first got it. Is that the stupid one who did this or the other stupid one? I went in and read for Barry and didn't hear until four or five months later that I got it.

AGW: Did you have fun in those scenes with the "stupid" guys at the airport? They don't know if they belong in departures or arrivals.

Zooey: (Laughs) The thing about playing stupid is you can't really know that you are stupid. They both did a brilliant job of doing the stupid guy routine so they were really fun to play off of.

AGW: You have been in some high profile films so can you still go to the mall without being recognized?

Zooey: Oh yeah. I'm always in stealth mode. If I change one thing about my appearance, I look like a different person. Friends of mine won't recognize me if I change my hair color or cut. This movie I have blonde hair. It makes a huge difference. I'm wearing my glasses because I'm tired today. But it works for guys too. Look how different Russell Crowe looked in Gladiator and some of his other films. Rene (Russo) was very Marilyn Monroe in this movie.

AGW: Is it difficult to do a big ensemble scene with so many actors running around?

Zooey: The stunt scenes are different. We fell down so many times. Ben Foster (her boyfriend in the film) comes running in and Rene (Russo) jumps on his back and they fall on me. I was like 'I wasn't trained to do this.' It's hard to find stunt people that match me because I have small bones. Stunt people are buff and I'm not at all. Several stunts weren't me. There is a fall in the airplane that isn't me. I jump on Tom Sizemore's back and I think I accidentally scratched him and he got mad.

AGW: What was the most fun on this shoot?

Zooey: Probably between takes. They'd bring in the Crispy Crèmes around 3 a.m. and they were gone in 60 seconds!