Making Her Mark on Mumford

If you blinked last year, you might have missed Zooey Deschanel's appearance on campus. But if you look on movie screens this fall, you'll see the former Northwestern student in the recent release Mumford.

Part of an ensemble cast that includes Martin Short, Alfre Woodard and Ted Danson, Deschanel plays Nessa Watkins, a depressed and stubborn teenager who is one of the many quirky patients of the new town shrink played by Loren Dean. Although Mumford was her first film, Deschanel, 19, was familiar with the medium. She grew up in Los Angeles surrounded by the film industry. Her father, Caleb, is a cinematographer (who was nominated for an Oscar for Fly Away Home) and her mother, Mary Jo, is an actress. Throughout her childhood, she travelled to movie sets.

"I never really wanted to go to the set," she said. "It was just a fun thing to do."

Being behind the camera might have been mundane, but Deschanel said she's wanted to act since she was three or four years old.

"I like to be in front of people," she said. "I always felt comfortable doing that. I like telling stories."

Deschanel acted in high school plays and did one episode of Veronica's Closet, but it was her performance in the musical Into the Woods that caught the attention of managers and agents. During her senior year of high school, she was cast in Mumford. She spent her last month of school in northern California on the film's six-week shoot.

Most of her scenes were with Dean, who Deschanel said was a mentor figure for her. She also worked with Lawrence Kasdan, the acclaimed director of The Big Chill.

"[The other actors] were all really charming, great people," Deschanel said. "Lawrence Kasdan is the nicest man and quite a genius. It was unbelievable."

After doing only theater, Mumford convinced her that movies were her medium.

"[Film] gives you the ability to be a perfectionist about each thing that happens," Deschanel said. "I have more control. I like control."

That was all before she came to Northwestern, which she chose because of its strong academics and theater program. Deschanel was a freshman theater major last fall. She lived in a tiny single in 1835 Hinman. She "did normal things students do," she said.

But while most students spent their Winter and Spring breaks on beaches or ski slopes, Deschanel was auditioning for roles.

Those auditions led to her role in a yet-to-be-titled new movie written and directed by Cameron Crowe, of Say Anything and Jerry Maguire fame. Deschanel left NU in April to begin rehearsals for the film, scheduled for release next spring. She plays the sister of a teenager who gets involved in the world of Zeppelin-esque '70s rock bands. The movie also stars Fargo's Frances McDormand, Billy Crudup, Anna Paquin, Fairuza Balk and Jason Lee.

Currently living in L.A., Deschanel is looking for a project before she starts filming Beauty Loop, about a college student who promotes a semester of chastity, in January.

Although she'll spend next winter on a college campus, Deschanel maintains a wait-and-see attitude about returning to NU. Making films has been an education of its own, especially on the reality of fame.

"You see all the people on Entertainment Tonight doing interviews at premieres," she said. "Everything looks very glamorous, but it's really not. That's the most grueling, least fun part. The most fun is the working. A lot of people think fame is so wonderful, but it's the most banal and ordinary part."