Zooey Deschanel

I have, yeah. My first film, Mumford, was here. It’s exciting to be back. It's a really great festival.

Yeah I know. It is weird once you travel to places for work and you have to navigate your way in a new place and be working at the same time.

Right, [laughs] she's a good friend of mine but I haven't seen her in a long time. It's nice when all these people who travel so much gather in one place for a couple days. You end up running into a lot of old friends.

My agents and manager read it and really liked it. They sent it to me and I thought it was really great. It was interesting to read a script that had such a complex female character. It's so rare in this business for a female character to have so much depth. I was really excited about it and I hoped I would get a chance to do it. I wanted to work with [writer/director] Adam [Rapp] because he’s such an interesting and incredible writer.

No, I'd never seen anything he'd done.

His brother's just an amazing actor and he had a part in Winter Passing which was really funny. Since we did the movie I’ve read more of Adam’s work and he has such an amazing voice. We're lucky that we got him to do films because up until now he was just doing theatre.

Isn't she wonderful? I was just driving down Pico Blvd and there's my big sister on this huge billboard. It is so amazing and exciting.

Obviously the family in Winter Passing is very dysfunctional. She’s an actress and her parents were writers so they treat art as almost another member of the family. There's a line in the film where I say, “This house is one big silent museum of suffering.” It’s that artistic temperament hanging over everybody's head. In that family it is almost more important than family members in some ways.

My own family has always had a very close relationship. I've always been very supported. My work doesn’t really have much to do with my personal relationships but it is exciting to grow as an artist and to be able to do more complex roles. It’s wonderful to have family to talk to who can see things from that point of view.

Yeah, that was a really intense scene. We were shooting in New Jersey in the dead of winter and we were all really tired. It was the middle of the night and that garage was like the coldest place I've ever been.

Oh no. It was a real garage. Sets are for movies with money. It was definitely intimidating to work with an actor of Ed’s caliber. I think that informed some of it. Ed was so heartbreaking when he cried and even though this was the difficult job I’ve ever done, Ed is such a generous actor that the scenes with him were almost easy. It was an incredible, fortunate turn of events that allowed me to work with such an incredible actor.

It’s a character that's teetering all the time. It is so much easier to be crying all the time in a role because extreme emotions are much easier than playing someone who’s constantly on the edge of something. In the beginning she's someone who can't feel any emotion and then it slowly gets to the point where she becomes in touch with her own feelings and can actually walk down the street with a guy.

If it's gratuitous it's not interesting but if it informs the movie and it helps explain the character I don't think that there's anything wrong with nudity. But sometimes it seems that there's a lot of gratuitous sex and nudity in films that doesn't help tell the story. I never felt taken advantage of.

Really it was a discussion. It was great working with Adam, because it was always a dialogue. The ideal situation is a director guiding things along. If I can’t bring in my ideas then why even hire an actor, just get a model. With Adam it was always back and forth. As far as the sex scenes, I think we all just discussed what would be the most appropriate thing.

There was a draft with a different ending. I might have said something about it but I don't do a movie for an ending. I do a movie because the material is good. Though it would have been a shame if the ending was different but I definitely wouldn't have turned it down.

No! It was pure coincidence. I met Adam at a bar at this hotel and he said “I just met Will Ferrell for the part.” I was really excited because I didn't know who to picture in that role. But when he said Will, I couldn’t think of anyone more perfect. Will is such a good actor and he has such like a heartbreaking quality about him that works perfectly in the movie. I thought it was such a great thing for him to show that side of himself.

I don't know. All of us going into it were excited because it was this really cool director who makes these incredible music videos; it had all these interesting actors and this great material. We took our best shot at it. I really like the film and I want to please people but in the end, you have to just put it out there and do your best work. I guess I don’t really care what anybody else thinks.

I have heard of it, yeah. There was somebody I knew who was working for SuicideGirls. I haven't been on the site, but it sounded really cool.

I do. I have naturally dark hair and pale skin so people put certain things on me because of the way I look. It’s my job to play with that a little bit as an actor. But there's a certain core persona that you can't change. Obviously my style and my idea of what looks cool is one thing. I wear my own clothes. People always want me to dye my hair for roles but I feel comfortable with my brown hair. It's fun to play with different identities but it's important to me to present myself as I am.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck