On Zooey Deschanel

nik.mercer — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 10:27:25 -0700

Regular readers of this space won’t be surprised to learn that Anthem hasn’t chugged the Kool-Aid when it comes to perennial It Girl Zooey Deschanel. She’s cannibalized more glossy magazine covers than Chloe Sevigny, which is why we feel it’s our public duty to counterbalance the gushing, fawning, frothing waves of adoration that Ms. Deschanel is so often bathed in.

It took a cover story in BlackBook magazine to make us flip our proverbial shit and hit the archives to answer a simple question: Is Zooey Deschanel the most boring person alive? BB’s Alison Powell conjures Zooey’s mythical “shyness” to explain why, for instance, she seems incapable of saying anything worth blowing up into a 30-point font pull quote. Yet how, we wonder, does this apparent shyness square with Deschanel’s media ubiquity? What if the journalist-approved “shyness” label is really a cover, designed to mask a vacuous interior as bottomless and incomprehensible as a black hole?

What if this ukelele-strumming, M. Ward-collaborating, vintage dress-wearing ingénue is really just a blank slate, a cipher, the personality equivalent of extra-firm tofu?

For scientific purposes, please consider the following compilation—by no means exhaustive—of Zooey Deschanel’s media quotables. It’s up to you to determine if we’re giving America’s darling an unfair shake, or if she is indeed a vacant automaton spewing press release-approved drivel wrapped in warm triteness and airy fluff. And don’t forget to check out She & Him’s tour diary, which includes exclusive nuggets like “I watch some episodes of Lost. I eat cookies. I feel stupid.”

“I never thought of myself as quirky. I was surprised when people said it.”

Jane Magazine, June/July 2007

"I watched Shallow Hal on a plane once, and I cried, because I was like, 'He likes her even though she's overweight.'"

Nylon, October 2003

"As a child, somebody would do one little thing and I would go nuts. I would freak out when people would tease me. I would feel emotions very deeply. Some of that's still in me, and I get a lot of that out by working."

Nylon, October 2003

“Sometimes I like singing more than acting. It depends.”

“I like to knit and crochet. You have to have something to take the edge off, and as an actor there's either a lot of downtime or no downtime, and you have to stay used to being busy.”

Interview Magazine, March 2003

"I'm not a very shy person, but I was just completely speechless working with Cameron."

Deschanel on working with Cameron Crowe on Almost Famous. Vanity Fair, July 2001

"When I was making [Barry Sonnenfeld's] Big Trouble in Miami, I had all this time, so I was like, Why not make this time like school? So I bought a book of word problems, and I would have a novel and some sort of philosophical book—something by Sartre or Nietzsche."

Vanity Fair, July 2001

“Street musicians make me nervous. I don’t know where to look. I don’t know how to act.”

Jane Magazine, June/July 2007

“I love doing one thing and then the other because they each provide a break. It is nice to have variety.”

Deschanel on her musical bent. BlackBook, June/July 2008

“I’ve always been more comfortable on stage than I am in real life.”

“There is something valuable about mistakes. You want things to be precious and not everything can be.”

“People who have the most courage are actually the people with the most fear. One way of getting control of the fear is to face it head on. The transition into music was a little frightening for me, but it’s more exciting [than acting] because it’s scarier.”

Zooey Deschanel, self-help guru. BlackBook, June/July 2008

“You know, even then I didn't feel like I was being pigeonholed. I thought it was funny that there was a Zooey Deschanel type [because] I didn't realize I was a type. No, I never felt like I was being pigeonholed; I just thought it was funny that somebody had said that. I feel like I've had amazing opportunities to be very diverse in my choices, you know, like I guess if you consider the whole picture of all the different things that I've been fortunate enough to do.”

Deschanel on being pigeonholed and the Zooey Deschanel type from 2003. Premier Magazine, June 2008

“I can change the way I look and seem like completely different people, and it's not necessarily on purpose. I think it's a gift. I think that's what's allowed me to be cast in a lot of different roles."

"I'm trying to quit shopping. It's an addiction.”

"I'm really close with my family. I like eating dinner at my parents' because they're good cooks."

Paper, March 2002

"I hated all the traveling. I'm really happy now that I had the experience, but at the time I was just so miserable to have to leave my friends in Los Angeles and go to places where they didn't have any food I liked or things I was used to."

Deschanel on traveling with her parents for films when she was young. The Boston Globe, Feb. 23, 2003

"I don't want to be a babe. I don't want vanity to ever get in the way, because I think to maintain that, you have to be aware of yourself all the time, and that gets in the way of acting. My job's not to be the beautiful person. My job is to be the best actor I can be.”

The Boston Globe, Feb. 23, 2003

“God, I just don’t want to be bored. It’s like the worst thing when I read a script and I’m like, ‘Oh God, it’s another really boring girlfriend part.’ Or it’s sometimes (in a perky voice,) ‘Oh, it’s someone’s best friend who talks like this!’ I try to do things that are different and interesting to me, and that’s important. I don’t want to work if I’m not interested or challenged. I don’t want to go to work and it have not something that’s exciting about it.”

Deschanel on reading scripts. Cinema Confidential, Oct. 27, 2003

"It was really fun to get to the set and see these unbelievable spaceships.”

Deschanel on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie set. Elle Girl, March 2005

“I drive a Volvo from the 90s. From before it went Ford. And it's safe for the puppies.”

GQ, November 2004

“This is probably the greatest day of my life since Christmas 91. It’s just such a relief that when I open my mouth, sound comes out.”

A dubious statement of fact from Zooey, having recovered from an illness. Spin, 2008.

"I hope some day I can be involved in charity work on a big level. It's important to challenge yourself and do things beyond the work that you're paid for."

"In my everyday life I like to joke and have fun. I do say exactly what I think, though."

"In auditions you have to risk being rejected. So you need a lot of perspective.”

"Even if a project doesn't turn out well or the way I'd hoped or wasn't a fun experience, it all goes into shaping who I am. I always learn from the experience."

"I have to be who I am. And then I get to be someone else when I go to work."

Daily Mail, July 2007

—Additional reporting by Ashley Houk