Zoe Kazan is a natural in Hollywood. The actress, screenwriter, and playwright is the daughter of screenwriters Nicholas Kazan and Robin Swicord. Her paternal grandparents were film and theatre director Elia Kazan and playwright Molly Kazan. Her sister, Maya, is an actress and director, and her long-time partner, Paul Dano, is an award-winning actor. Kazan’s rise to Hollywood success seemed inevitable.
Surprisingly, Kazan was initially reluctant to be part of show business. In a 2017 interview with The Guardian, she discussed how lonely the creation process seemed.
“It looked really lonely. Sometimes at the dinner table it was like there was a fog around them, when they were in the real process of being in their draft. They never had to see anyone [...] And I was a very emotional kid, the most extrovert person in my family, and I was like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to do something else,’” she said.
Nevertheless, the desire to act and create was too strong of a calling, and Kazan made her film debut in 2003’s “Swordswallowers and Thin Men.” Three years later, she had her first professional stage role in the off-Broadway revival of “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.” She appeared in several more notable films during the early 2000s, including “The Savages,” “Fracture,” “Me and Orson Welles,” and “Revolutionary Road.”
During this time, Kazan also made her critically acclaimed Broadway debut in a revival of William Inge's “Come Back, Little Sheba.” Her own play, “Absalom,” premiered at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Kentucky in 2009. She also had lead roles in the films “I Hate Valentine's Day” and “The Exploding Girl.”
In 2010, Kazan had the leading role in the comedy-drama “Happy. Thank You. More. Please.” That same year, her play “We Live Here” made its off-Broadway premiere, followed by her next project, “Ruby Sparks,” for which she wrote the screenplay. She co-starred in the critically acclaimed independent film “The Big Sick” in 2017 and the highly praised “Wildlife” in 2018, which she co-wrote with Paul Dano.
Kazan’s most recent project, “She Said,” is currently in post-production. She is starring as Jodi Kantor, one of The New York Times journalists that exposed Harvey Weinstein's history of abuse and sexual misconduct against women.