Deutch out to make mark on Hollywood
LOS ANGELES — To say actor Zoey Deutch is a regular at Art’s Deli would be an understatement. Sporting an oversized sweatshirt, she breezes into the restaurant, an institution in Los Angeles’ Studio City since 1957, and is immediately greeted with familiar hugs from the staff. One chimes in that he’s known her since she was a baby.
“I do all my interviews here, I do all my meetings here, I do all my dates here,” Deutch says, laughing.
Deutch grew up not too far away from the spot with her movie-business parents. Her father is Pretty in Pink director Howie Deutch and her mother is actor and 1980s dream girl Lea Thompson. They fell for each other on the set of the high school romcom Some Kind of Wonderful and have stayed together since.
At 22, Deutch, is looking to make a name for herself in the business separate from her insider parents. She has been acting professionally since age 15, switching from Disney shows to young adult genre fare, some of which are better regarded (Beautiful Creatures) than others (Vampire Academy), and now more adult roles.
This year, she was paired opposite James Franco, 16 years her senior, in the comedy Why Him, and last year played the wise female lead in the otherwise testosterone-fuelled Richard Linklater indie Everybody Wants Some!!
Her latest, Before I Fall, which came out Friday, is a dark Groundhog Day-like portrait of a popular teenager forced to relive the last day of her life over and over again. The film explores subjects such as bullying, peer pressure and how to be a decent person in the world within conventions of a psychological thriller.
“She’s the real thing,” said Before I Fall director Ry RussoYoung. “The girl has serious chops.”
Deutch is someone who admittedly likes to take control of things, even outside of the duties of actor. Before I Fall, for instance, was a $3-million movie that didn’t have much of a wardrobe budget, so she found herself calling in favours to make sure they had all the duplicates to work for the time loop construct.
In her next film, Rebel in the Rye, she plays the popular socialite Oona O’Neill, who dated J.D. Salinger and eventually married Charlie Chaplin and got to affect a mid-Atlantic accent à la Katharine Hepburn (Deutch’s “queen idol of the universe”).
Deutch is interested in everything and everyone. She skipped out on college to focus on acting, but packs her free time with extracurricular pursuits. She reads voraciously, studies with a political science tutor (the current focus is on constitutional law) and takes art classes at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
She has taken a vested interest in politics and feminist causes, such as reproductive rights, excitedly lifting up her sweatshirt to reveal a T-shirt underneath with an image of female anatomy and a gun with the words that the former is “more controlled” than the latter. Deutch found the shirt at a local bookstore and bought some for all of her friends. “They’re like: ‘What’s that?’ ” Deutch said. “I’m like: ‘That’s your uterus.’ ”
Speaking out on causes is something Deutch feels a responsibility to do. “There are privileges in my life, inherently, because of my job and that I’m white. I have these things that are completely out of my control and if I don’t use these things to raise awareness for people who don’t, then that’s lame,” she said.
But the primary focus is on acting and she’s in it for the long haul. Deutch resents the moniker “it girl” for the temporality it implies. “It’s OK, call me whatever you want, but I’m here forever, whether you like it or not.”