I just went through my childhood attic with my sister. I'm not an expert, and I don't mean to put myself in that category, but thinking about Malcolm Gladwell and the 10,000 hours, I was like, Here are my 10,000 hours! Zoe Kazan More Quotes by Zoe Kazan More Quotes From Zoe Kazan I think for acting on stage and in film, one informs the other. Obviously, they require really different kinds of discipline and really different kinds of work. It's more along the same continuum, for me. Zoe Kazan discipline acting thinking I've always really been interested in the Pygmalion myth and both what it has to say about creativity and what it has to say about relationships between men and women. I'd been thinking about what I would want to do with that if I was going to write on that theme, and one morning I woke up and Calvin and Ruby Sparks were in my head. Zoe Kazan creativity writing morning I do not do my own taxes. It's too many forms. "Here are my 70,000 forms. I have no idea."I would be in jail. Zoe Kazan taxes Most adults get to a point in their careers where they feel secure, where they have a body of work behind them that will ensure longevity, and for actors, it's just not like that. You're basically always a temp, going from job to job. Zoe Kazan longevity In a way, you normalize your own childhood to yourself, so I never thought about how much I wrote as a kid. So I was there, confronted with it - so many notebooks, so many tiny plays. Every week we put on a play. We had a big futon, so my sister and I would use the futon as our stage, and I wrote little skits and made her faint because I found it so funny. Zoe Kazan childhood notebook kids Every piece of writing I've done has been something where I feel like I need to get this out of me, whether it's a seed of something personal or an anxiety that turns into a play or an image that's in my mind and haunts me that I'm trying to investigate. Zoe Kazan anxiety mind writing I think everyone is always asking themselves, How is my work meaningful, how is my life meaningful? As I get older, I feel like who I am as a person and a citizen is more important than who I am in my work. But I do think it reframed slightly for me, how much I have to care about a project in order to want to do it. Sometimes, obviously, you have a take a job for money. But I think I'm quicker now when I get a script that's, say, borderline misogynist, I'm not going to go in for it. I'm thinking more about what I'm putting into the world. Zoe Kazan important meaningful thinking I've gotten incredibly lucky with the people I've gotten to work with. It's made my mind better, and it's made me a better person. Zoe Kazan lucky mind people You know, it only happens a handful of times in your career, where you walk out of an audition feeling like all the stars aligned, my preparation paid off, something magical happened in the room. I've gotten really lucky and I've gotten to work a lot, and I would say it's only happened, like, two or three times, where I've walked out and been like, This was the right thing and the right choice and they should just cast me. Zoe Kazan preparation choices feelings I think from my earliest childhood, I liked to tell stories, put on plays and write things. It's funny to think of it as an "artistic bug" because I didn't necessarily want to be an artist. It's just who I was and how I communicate. Zoe Kazan artist writing thinking So often you're asked to play impossibly perfect version of yourself on screen that it's nice to get to bring in those parts that you think aren't as worth looking at. Zoe Kazan nice play thinking I will say they were horrified when I wanted to be an actor. It wasn't a showbiz-y family, and my parents are real introverts who don't go to a lot of Hollywood parties and are most comfortable in their pajamas in our sweet little home. Part of the reason I wanted to be an actor and not just a writer is because I felt much more extroverted than that - I love to be around people, and feed off people's energy, and collaborations. If I hadn't had their example, I wouldn't have been so serious, but I also wouldn't have wanted so much to find another creative outlet. Zoe Kazan party real sweet I would not wear any clothes that had a brand name on them, and I only read books that were canonical. I wouldn't wear makeup, and I didn't like to let boys open the door for me because I felt like it was sexist. My heart was in the right place, but I was such a tiny dictator about it. It's embarrassing to me now because I was so rigid. It's such a rigid way of looking at the world. There's something very young about that mind-set. Zoe Kazan heart boys book I wouldn't wear makeup, and I didn't like to let boys open the door for me because I felt like it was sexist. Zoe Kazan makeup doors boys I grew up with my grandfather [Elia Kazan] being famous in a way that's not like Beyoncé, but famous in a relative way. It made me feel weird about the way that we treat people that are famous, and it made me feel weird about fame in general. Zoe Kazan grandfather people way There are a lot of words that I knew first as a reader, and I never put the pieces together in my brain. The word segue I thought was pronounced "seeg," I think until I went to college, which is horribly embarrassing. Zoe Kazan college brain thinking I had a real feeling of being fated to be an actor and do my work, and I remember so much speaking up in a room full of people who authentically knew as much or more than me, and feeling like I was absolutely equal, and what I had to say was important. Zoe Kazan speaking-up real people When I would get close on a part but wouldn't get it, I would be like, "They made a mistake," which is not how I think about things now. I both admire it and I'm grateful for the modicum of health, knowledge, and humility that I have acquired over the last 10 or 15 years. Zoe Kazan grateful humility mistake I've worked with a lot of really famous people. It stops being weird really quickly. For me, at least. Zoe Kazan being-weird people There's part of me that's grateful for the delusion, because it takes a very hard shell to get started as an actor, and I don't have a very hard shell. Zoe Kazan shells grateful actors
