Zooey Story

Deschanel of 'All the Real Girls' not your typical Hollywood starlet

When David Gordon Green and Paul Schneider were spitballing character ideas for the young woman in their new movie, All the Real Girls, they drew heavily on women they knew in college. Then, during casting, they met Zooey Deschanel.

"And we realized we weren't smart enough to create somebody as complex as Zooey," Schneider says. "We pretty much had to go back to the drawing board and flesh out that character. Zooey just blew us away."

Deschanel, 23, seems to have that effect on people. Maybe it's the way she stares at you with those huge blue eyes. Maybe it's her ability to speak with equal authority on Fellini and chocolate milk. Whatever it is, for an actress who up to now has only appeared as a scene-stealer in a number of movies both enjoyable (Almost Famous, The Good Girl) and forgettable (The New Guy), Deschanel has won an inordinate amount of fans.

The fan club will only expand with All the Real Girls, Deschanel's first starring role. In the movie's roller coaster love story, she plays the girl most likely to make you scream alternately with joy and fear. If you don't know Deschanel now, you might want to read up. She's going to be around for a long time.

Yes, she was named after that Zooey. But she relates more to J.D. Salinger's Franny because, after all, Zooey's a boy.

She comes from show-biz stock. But that's not why she wanted to act. Zooey's father, Caleb, is a marvelously talented cinematographer with such films as Black Stallion, Being There and The Natural to his credit. Her mother, Mary Jo, is a gifted actress. Thus, Zooey spent much of her nomadic childhood whiling away time on film sets, never the most exciting places. And yet, here she is, an adult, whiling away time on film sets.

"I've always known that I wanted to do this," Deschanel says. "Maybe not even known. It was an unsaid thing. It wasn't something I consciously thought about. It was that or nothing else. If somebody told me acting wasn't an option, it would be like telling a kid there's no Santa Claus."

She's quite self-aware. Typical line in a conversation:

Q: So have you been in your share of train-wreck relationships?

A: I would consider myself very naive. Wait a minute. If I were naive, I wouldn't know it, I guess. So I must be a little sophisticated. Um -- what was the question again?

She makes herself heard. It's not just the alto voice, which booms from across the room (across the street, across a sold-out stadium). It's her refusal to shrink in the background.

"When I was in middle school, I was in the big high-school musicals and I was in the chorus and maybe I'd get one little line," Deschanel says. "But I'd make that one line count. People could always hear that line incredibly clearly because I'd sing it so loud. It's not about upstaging people. You've just got to make the most of what you have."

She had seen most of Alfred Hitchcock's films by the time she was 10. Making her way through Jean-Luc Godard's output took her a little longer. Steven Gaghan, who directed Deschanel last year in "Abandon," told her shortly after they met: "Godard has made about 100 films and I think that you're the only person on earth, besides him, who's seen at least 90 of them."

Upshot: Expect to see Deschanel -- once she becomes firmly established -- in more movies outside the mainstream (All the Real Girls) instead of bolstering dreary commercial fare.

At 3, she was already winning comparisons to the greats.

"My nursery school did a production of The Three Little Pigs," she says. "I played the third pig. When the wolf knocked on my door, I refused to get up and answer it because, to me, he was knocking the wrong way. I just laid there, snoring away on stage, fully immersed in my character. My dad turned to my mom and said, 'Dustin Hoffman.'"

She's not a big fan of contemporary pop culture. She has a warehouse-size closet full of vintage clothes. Her favorite singers are Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone. One year for Halloween, she dressed up like Anna Karenina. When she was 20, she spent six months watching three classic movies a day at the New Beverly and the Cinematheque. For her, film comedy went to hell in a handbasket after It Happened One Night and Bringing Up Baby.

Her main professional goal isn't to win an Oscar or make the cover of People or In Style, but to "bring back" witty movies like those classic screwball comedies. To which, we can only say: Best of luck.

The ukulele thing is overplayed. Not by Deschanel. She can play it as long as she likes, as far as we're concerned. It's just that most every story written about Deschanel mentions her love for the four-string instrument, but she considers her voice to be her instrument of choice. (She also plays piano and steel-pedal guitar.)

Deschanel and her singing partner, actress Samantha Shelton, have been performing a cabaret show with a nine-piece band at hotel cafes and small venues like the Vermont Bar. But they're moving up to the big time on Feb. 27 with a show at the Henry Fonda Theater.

Is she nervous?

"It's worse than a movie premiere," says Deschanel, who counts Judy Garland and Sarah Vaughn as singing influences. "But I'm not afraid to make a fool of myself. Never have been. The idea is to have fun, and there's no doubt we will."

Her favorite song is "I Can't Give You Anything but Love." ("Every time I hear it, I get happy," she says.) Deschanel's definitive version: June Christy. Runner-up: Django Reinhardt.

Cameron Crowe thinks she has that Hepburn magic. When asked how he would cast any contemporary actress in any role, Crowe chose Deschanel for Audrey Hepburn's part in Billy Wilder's Love in the Afternoon.

Said Crowe of meeting her when Deschanel auditioned for Almost Famous: "The moment Zooey walked into our office, we were no longer in L.A. She wore an oversize, knee-length antique coat, an exotic flower behind her ear and a mischievous smile. Suddenly, a whiff of Paris was in the air. I pictured her with a cello, sneaking into the Ritz Hotel, a young girl abroad and looking for trouble."