Haunted houses? Improv? Just a walk in the park for All the Real Girls star...

"Somebody had murdered their entire family in one of the houses that we shot in. I found out the day we finished filming there." Ah, the joys of acting in a low-budget movie. But, for Zooey Deschanel, playing virginal heartbreaker Noel in David Gordon Green's All the Real Girls was still an enjoyable experience, especially as director Green conveniently failed to mention this little detail during the shoot. "It was all cleaned up, so it didn't really seem like a haunted house. It's just the cursed house of the town. That's why nobody wanted to buy it and that's why we got it so cheap."
Deschanel's favourite aspect of co-starring in the sophmore helmer's follow-up to critic-pleaser George Washington was the chance to flex her improv skills, even at the audition. "I went in there not knowing what to expect at all, having memorised a couple of scenes, and then Paul [Schneider, who plays her bad-boy older lover] started going off the script. Instead of saying, 'This isn't in here,' I just kept talking."
Such challenges are easily met by a 23-year-old actress who, in a relatively short career that kicked off in Lawrence Kasdan's 1999 comedy Mumford, has worked with the high-profile likes of Cameron Crowe (Almost Famous) and Barry Sonnenfeld (Big Trouble). Of course, you could say the big screen was an inevitable destination for a young woman who, with an actress for a mother (Mary Jo Deschanel) and a cinematographer for a father (Caleb Deschanel), spent her entire childhood zipping to different sets around the world.
But despite the showbiz upbringing, Deshcanel insists cinema wasn't in her blood. "Sets were boring to me when I was younger, so I wanted to do theatre. I mean, it's been my dream to appear in the West End since I was a little kid. But then, I kind of fell into doing movies.
She knows it's film work that really pays the bills and her roles are certainly getting meatier. She'll next be seen sporting pointy ears in fish-out-of-water Will Ferrell comedy Elf, before taking her first leading role alongside Famke Janssen in the disfunctional-family comedy Eulogy. So don't expect any West End board-treading in the near future.