On the big screen, through a camera lens or across a narrow breakfast table, the eyes definitely have it.
“I don’t know what it is about her eyes,” says writer and director Adam Rapp of Zooey Deschanel, who stars in his drama “Winter Passing.” The film opens Friday in Orange County.
“I’m not sure if she learned how to make her eyes look like enormous lanterns on the screen because her father is a famous cinematographer, or if she made a pact with the devil. Either way, those eyes are magical.”
Chatting between bites of a late-morning omelet at her favorite Santa Monica restaurant, the actress opens those big, blue, expressive eyes even wider and insists that she knows of no such deal with the devil. As for her father, she isn’t sure what effect he or her actress mother had on her career.
“It’s hard to dismiss the importance of genes,” she says in her characteristic smoky voice. “But I was passionate about acting even before I knew my own name. Acting was not a conscious decision for me. The desire was there long before I ever knew who my parents were.”
Caleb Deschanel was the director of photography on “The Natural,” “Being There,” “The Right Stuff,” “The Black Stallion” and “The Passion of the Christ.” Mary Jo Deschanel has appeared in many TV shows (“Twin Peaks”) and films, and is probably best-known for her portrayal of astronaut John Glenn’s wife, Annie, in “The Right Stuff.”
By the way, Zooey’s older sister, Emily Deschanel, is the star of the Fox TV series “Bones.”
“I grew up around a lot of creative people, so the show-business life seemed pretty normal to me,” said Zooey, who was named for the male character in J.D. Salinger’s novel “Franny and Zooey.”
“It wasn’t until we moved to London for a year when I was 7 that I realized we were a little different. I attended the American School, where most of the students are embassy kids, and they seemed impressed that my parents were in the film industry.
“By that time, I knew my mother was an actress, but it’s not like they sat around the dinner table and talked shop. We still don’t, although we all love to talk about the movies. But movies are just one of the many things we talk about.”
The 26-year-old actress said she has discussed her career with her parents, but has never sought their advice on roles.
“Everybody in my family has pretty strong opinions, and I don’t think anyone could convince anyone else about which roles to take.”
In fact, Deschanel has remained true to her own philosophy when choosing roles.
“My basic philosophy is that the day is too long, and the work too difficult, to wake up at 4:30 in the morning for a character that you don’t find interesting.
“I can’t be motivated by money, fame or wearing a pretty dress. Sometimes, those things are a byproduct of what you do, but they can’t be the motivation for waking up at 4:30. You have to be motivated by loving the work.”
Deschanel got her first professional acting role while still in high school (TV’s “Veronica’s Closet”), made her first film (“Mumford”) at 19 and got her first great notices in her second film (she played the sympathetic older sister in Cameron Crowe’s “Almost Famous”). She has two new films hitting theaters in the coming weeks.
Besides “Winter Passing,” she plays Sarah Jessica Parker’s sassy roommate in the romantic comedy “Failure to Launch,” which opens March 10.
In the former, she is the star of the movie; in the latter, she plays a supporting role. But one gets the feeling that she accepted both roles for the same reason.
“I know that ‘Failure to Launch’ is a big studio movie, but I didn’t do it for the money. I couldn’t live with myself if I did it for the money. I’m not trying to sound noble, but it’s that 4:30-in-the-morning thing again. If I didn’t like the role, and if I didn’t like the movie, then I wouldn’t do it for any amount of money.
“If the movie doesn’t turn out well,” she added, “then I can live with that because I know the intentions were pure.”
Deschanel has made 17 movies (five more are completed and will be released this year or next), and in most of them she played supporting characters (she was Will Ferrell’s love interest in “Elf”). In “Winter Passing,” she gets her first shot at a starring role.
Deschanel plays a struggling actress in New York City who is approached by a literary agent with an offer of $100,000 if she will turn over a box of love letters written by her mother to her father. Her mother was a famous writer who recently committed suicide, and her father (played by Ed Harris) is a reclusive novelist from whom the young woman has been estranged.
To collect the bounty, she must travel to her father’s rural retreat, where she finds him living in his garage, while two former students have taken up residence in the main house.
Director Rapp, who wrote the story originally as a two-act play before turning it into a screenplay, said he met with 30 actresses in a two-day visit to Los Angeles during the casting process. Although he said he was impressed by Deschanel’s performance in the 2003 film “All the Real Girls,” he wasn’t sure she could carry his film.
“I wasn’t too hopeful, but then again, you never know. That’s why you have the meetings. But the minute I met Zooey in a hotel lobby, I knew she could do it. We just hit it off, and I could tell she was smart, had a wonderful facility with the language and could express great emotion with her eyes.
“And then once I looked at her through the camera lens, it was all over. She has this amazing quality about her. When you walk into a crowded room, you don’t notice her. But as soon as you get to within three feet of her, you can’t stop noticing her. She expresses so much in close-up.”
Deschanel said the responsibility of carrying the movie was daunting (“You have to work constantly; there are no breaks for the lead character”), but it was even more difficult because of the character’s roller-coaster emotional state.
“She’s was on the verge all the time,” the actress said. “I was so emotionally wound by the end of the day that I would go back to my trailer and cry.
“But that’s also the reason I loved playing her so much. I’ve had a protective instinct toward all the characters I’ve played, and I felt very protective toward this character. She is so icy cold in the beginning that I felt a need to protect her from herself. She is likely to be misunderstood by the audience, which probably won’t like her at all, and the challenge was in trying to make the audience understand why she does what she does.”
In addition to the five films that will come out later, Deschanel has a musical career of sorts, singing and playing ukulele with a cabaret act called All the Stars Were Pretty Babies.
Between the acting and singing, she keeps pretty busy.
“I’m almost never not working,” she said. “My last real vacation was when I was 18 when my family went to Italy. I don’t know what it’s like to not be working.”
In fact, she works so hard that one would be hard-pressed to ever find her partying face on a tabloid cover, or to find her name linked with any Hollywood scandal.
“I’m way too busy working to get in that kind of trouble,” she said. “Not that I would anyway. I don’t understand the people who think about their celebrity first and their career second. How do those people stay motivated?
“More important, how do those people get up at 4:30 in the morning?”
Contact the writer: (714) 796-5051, ext. 1110, or bkoltnow@ocregister.com
