With five films (and counting) under her belt in less than one year, Hollywood insider Zooey Deschanel proves stars are made and born.

Zooey Deschanel is utterly convinced that she was born to lead the life she's leading. And looking at the evidence, one can't help concluding that she's probably right. Not only is her father, Caleb, an Oscar-nominated cinematographer and her mother, Mary Jo, an actress; not only did she grow up on film sets from Los Angeles to Yugoslavia ("before the war broke out," Deschanel notes, but still); not only was she blessed with china-doll skin, ice-blue eyes, and a low, lazy voice capable of making Kathleen Turner sound like Minnie Mouse; but more than anything she has talent, of the obvious, scene-stealing, innate kind that made managers and agents come calling when she was just sixteen years old, starring as Little Red Riding Hood in a Roundhouse Theater production of Into the Woods. "Ever since I was born I've been performing," Deschanel says. "My parents say that when I was a baby I was trying to make people laugh, even before I was conscious. It always felt like not just what I wanted to do but what I had to do as well."
She's speaking from the Montreal set of Abandon, the new film by much-talked-about Traffic writer and first-time directer Stephen Gaghan, and, caught up in her enthusiasm, one can easily overlook the fact that Deschanel, 21, is currently in the faintly embarrassing position of being almost famous almost entirely for having appeared in Cameron Crowe's film of that name. It's a testiment to Deschanel's appeal that her small role as the lead's rock-'n'-roll-loving sister, combined with a similarly charming turn in Lawrence Kasdan's little-seen Mumford (her debut), has generated enough buzz to keep the young actress in fashion spreads and movie magazines for going on three years now. But the moment has arrived for her to prove to the public that she's been doing much more with her time than just having her picture taken.
This fall, Deschanel stars in two movies: The New Guy, which she says is "sort of a high school retelling of My Fair Lady" - she plays "the best friend," a misfit singer in a funk band - and Barry Sonnenfeld's Miami-mob comedy Big Trouble, as Rene Russo's kidnapped daughter in an ensemble cast that also features Tim Allen, Johnny Knoxville, and Stanley Tucci. These films are only the first strike in a string that also includes the Sundance hit Manic, in which Deschanel plays a young mental patient; Miguel Arteta's The Good Girl, which also stars Jennifer Aniston and Deschanel's old junior high pal Jake Gyllenhaal; and Abandon, in which she stars with Katie Holmes. All in all, Deschanel completed an astonishing five films between June 2000 and June 2001. "Work begets work," she says of the streak. "All of a sudden everything I'd done just paid off." She's being realistic, not blase - later in the conversation, attempting to clarify the magnitude of her role in Big Trouble without violating a Sonnenfeld-imposed ban on discussing the plot, she says simply and happily, "I'm on the poster!" Her Hollywood background, though it provided a useful education in "what a mark is, and what good lighting looks like," did not render the actress indifferent to the charms of her chosen profession. "I'm very interested in saving movies," she said when first interviewed by Vogue more than a year ago, and experience does not appear to have altered her goals. Deschanel, who dropped out of Northwestern after two semesters but nonetheless retains a passion for learning, spent half of her twentieth year watching three old movies a day at the New Beverly and the Cinematheque. She's developed a slightly anachronistic affinity for films like It Happened One Night and Bringing Up Baby, and now claims that her main professional goal is to "bring back" witty movies modeled after her favorite screwball comedies of the thirties. Over course, the other items on her to-do list - moving out of her parents' house is a biggie - are more in keeping with what one would expect from a young actress, but with her charm and free determination, it seems likely that Deschanel will, in short order and with minimal fuss and maximum style, accomplish all that and more.