Zooey Deschanel is a true Hollywood original. With her bone-white skin and huge blue eyes, she’s startlingly beautiful, but unconventionally so. She’s high-energy and high-decibel, but her accent is impossible to place. She has a flair for off-the-wall conversation, but is too smart to dismiss as merely a kook.
Born into the acting business - her mother is an actress; her father a cinematographer - she made her film debut in 1999’s Mumford. Since then, she’s specialised in playing ‘misfits’, from a mental patient in indie film Manic to a spacefaring scientist in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. Her latest movie is (500) Days of Summer, in which she plays a love-weary secretary who falls for a greetings-card writer. Now 29, she lives in LA and is engaged to singer Ben Gibbard.
If there was a fire in my home the first things I’d grab would be my musical instruments.
I’ve got two pianos, a Yamaha upright from the Sixties and one from Twenties Chicago. Those pianos are my babies. They’d be difficult to get out of the door in a hurry, but I can’t leave my babies behind, right? I’ve also got a pedal steel guitar and a couple of ukuleles. People seem to think playing the ukulele makes me some kind of eccentric, but it doesn’t seem odd to me. I love the sound they make. George Formby is one of my heroes.
The best music was made before 1980.
It’s not that music went tragically wrong in the Nineties; I just don’t connect to recent stuff so much. The music I love I’ve always loved, whether it’s Ella Fitzgerald or the Kinks, Dusty Springfield or Bobbie Gentry. The last band I loved was the Smiths, but even they are less in my sphere than those other names I’ve mentioned. But I’ve listened to them a lot recently, because their songs are a big part of (500) Days of Summer. In general I prefer old stuff, whether it’s music, movies or clothes.
I knew I was destined to become an actress from the age of two.
My nursery school did a production of The Three Little Pigs. Even at two I was very specific about how I wanted the scene to play out, like I would insist that the narrator called me ‘Third Baby Pig’. When the wolf started knocking on the door I refused to get up and open it because he was knocking the wrong way.
I just lay on the stage pretending to be asleep.
At this point my dad leaned over to my mum and whispered, ‘Dustin Hoffman.’ He meant not only was I definitely going to be an actor, but I would always want to act in my own way, the way I felt was appropriate for the moment. He was right. As an actor I’ve never settled for less than the best. That doesn’t make me difficult to work with; it just makes me very precise.
I grew up believing my sister was from the planet Neptune and had been sent down to Earth to kill me.
I believed this because my sister Emily convinced me of it when I was a toddler. I think she’d seen Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and her imagination ran away with her. There’s a part of me that still believes it. I have moments when I think, ‘Hmm, could that be true?’ Occasionally I ask my sister about it and she responds by pulling an alien face, which only confuses matters.
As a child my best friends were tropical fish.
At elementary school I was a bit of a troublemaker. I wasn’t a horrible child; I simply didn’t understand the rules I was meant to abide by. It took me a long time to understand things like waiting my turn or raising my hand before I could talk in class. I was very sensitive and kind of chubby. I didn’t respond well to teasing and taunting. So I’d end up doing something like hitting some kid with a pencil and getting sent to the principal’s office. There was a big fish tank there. I spent so much time in that office that I got to know the fish real well.
I bought a Fifties prom dress for $15 and loved it so much I wore it to the Oscars.
Happiness to me is finding bargains in second-hand stores. I’ve been passionate about vintage clothes as far back as I can remember and I’ve developed a good eye for a bargain. In a New Orleans thrift store I got a Seventies ski suit that had been designed for the Winter Olympics. I picked that up for $30 and it’s worth much more.
It took me years to get over my fear of ghosts.
I believe there are things within my control and things outside my realm of control. Eventually I realised it was time to stop feeling anxious about ghosts that I’ve never met, may never meet and may not even exist.
I used to anonymously fax people photos of Liza Minnelli.
She was everywhere at the time because she was about to marry David Gest. I was captivated by all these photographs in magazines and sent them all over the place, but I think most people worked out it was me. It didn’t strike me as strange or silly.
People tell me I have the strangest hobbies; on movie sets I used to crochet hats for the entire cast and crew, although the repetitive motion used to hurt my wrists.
But some of the things I like doing are perfectly normal - bowling, ice skating and miniature golf. These days I pass the time on set by reading books.
You may be surprised to learn that I’m able to make myself invisible.
Not literally invisible - but I only need to change one tiny thing about my appearance and even my closest friends don’t recognise me. A slight change of hair colour or make-up is usually enough. It makes for an easier life. I guess I’ve got one of those faces that’s easily adaptable.
I believe your life is extended by one hour if you hold your breath when passing a graveyard.
My dad taught me that when I was very young. He used to say it wouldn’t work unless I held my breath for the whole length of the graveyard. I still do it to this day.