The Verge: Zoe Kazan

Both of your parents are writers. Do you ever send them the scripts you're thinking of doing?

No, never. Never, never, never.

Did you make a rule about it?

I think I sent them a script once when I got the part and they wanted to read it, and they sent me back the script with all sorts of notes on the story. I was like, "Not helpful." [Laughs] What they do is so different from what I do, but sometimes when I have trouble -- especially in a play -- I'll talk to them about a scene.

You're also in Josh Radnor's happythankyoumoreplease at Sundance in January, which was just announced.

I'm so excited about that! I loved making the movie and I loved Josh. He's so talented and smart, and he's really one of the best directors I've ever worked with.

It's about a whole lot of young people in Manhattan, and it sounds at first blush like Josh's sitcom How I Met Your Mother. You would know better than I would, though.

I'd never seen that show before working with Josh, and I've watched it since and it's very charming, but the movie is different. It's kind of in the vein of -- and I don't think Josh would feel comfortable hearing me say this because it's a big comparison to make -- but it's kind of Woody Allen-ish, in the vein of Crimes and Misdemeanors and Annie Hall. The way it's about New York and its attention to women...Josh is a good friend to women and he wrote some really beautiful parts for them in this movie. It was fun to play an adult woman. I've played a lot of daughters and young people.

You grew up in Los Angeles the daughter of two writers, and now you live in New York and do movies and theater. Is that how you expected your life to go?

Not at all. I really didn't have that much interest in theater, I was a cinephile. I grew up watching movies, not going to plays. Of course, in most acting classes, you read and study plays, and I think I started to love the theater there. When I got an agent and started auditioning for things, theater is the first thing that started to click for me. Now, I feel like I couldn't leave New York. This has been a wonderful year, but I haven't been able to be on stage this year and I feel bereft. There are some amazing roles written for women in theater, and there aren't as many in film. It's a chance for me to improve my chops and play meatier parts.

You said earlier that once a play is done, it's like talking about a dead relative. Is film more permanent?

I worked with Ethan Hawke two years ago when he directed me in a play, and Ethan said something about the theater vs. film dichotomy that I think is really true. He said that everybody thinks that theater is kind of a temporary art and that film is eternal, but to the people who see you in that play, it's in their memory forever. You never get any older in their memory, and it never pales over time, whereas with film, an acting style can become defunct. You look at Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant in His Girl Friday, and it's great acting, but it's not anywhere approximating the kind of acting style that people do now. It's a kind of exercise like the Zen monks do, of making the mandalas and then letting them loose in the wind. It teaches you about mortality and time.

[Photo Credit: Mike Coppola/FilmMagic]

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