Scene-Stealing Deschanel Gains Fame

Working with Abandon Zooey Deschanel could soon be more than almost famous

Three people are on the poster for the movie Abandon. If there were a fourth, it would be Zooey Deschanel.

But if she keeps stealing scenes like she does in this film, she'll soon be on a movie poster — all by herself.

The 22-year-old actress has gotten a lot more famous since she played the older sister of the boy-wonder rock writer in Almost Famous. She also drew notice for a hilarious part in The Good Girl, as Jennifer Aniston's discount store co-worker.

And now she plays Samantha, the Waspy, wiseacre, insecure friend of Katie Holmes in the psychological thriller Abandon. (The movie's poster shows Holmes, Benjamin Bratt and Charlie Hunnam.)

"The film has a kind of unrelenting atmosphere, and the role of Samantha was designed to kind of try to relieve that as much as possible. So I needed somebody who was capable of walking into a scene and not only stealing the scene but completely changing the energy," says Stephen Gaghan, the Oscar-winning Traffic screenwriter who's making his directorial debut with Abandon.

Deschanel, he says, is "like one of those sprinters who can just accelerate out of the blocks."

Deschanel, for her part, likes being the tortoise more than the hare. For now, she prefers being considered a character actress, as a prelude to something bigger.

"I want to feel secure enough so that when I do carry a movie I'm ready and I'm completely competent," she says during a publicity swing through New York.

The daughter of cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (The Patriot, The Natural, The Right Stuff, Being There) and actress Mary Jo Deschanel (The Right Stuff), she always wanted to be a performer. ("No!" she says with a what-are-you-crazy look when asked if she ever wanted to get behind the camera like her dad.) From the time she was 2, she remembers doing little dances and puppet shows.

Named after the character in J.D. Salinger's "Franny and Zooey," she says with a laugh that she related to Franny more "just because, you know, Zooey's a boy."

She spent much of her childhood traveling the world — wherever her parents happened to be making a film: Yugoslavia, the Seychelles ...

"I hated it at the time. I was miserable. If you're 8 and you live in Los Angeles and everybody has toys and you go to a country that has a Marxist dictatorship and there's no toy stores and nobody speaks English and, like, you know, it's blazing hot every day (and) they only have fish, which you don't like ..."

And then she would return to school in Los Angeles and "nobody likes you because you were weird and you went away."

She does fondly recall living in London. "At least it was a city, and they had toy stores there," she says, chuckling.

In retrospect, she acknowledges, "it was a really amazing experience ... It was very interesting and I learned a lot."

Deschanel dropped out of Northwestern University after a couple semesters and has seriously focused on an acting career for five years. After starring in a production of Into the Woods, she did an episode of the TV series Veronica's Closet, then made her feature-film debut in the little-seen Mumford.

She first drew wide attention in Cameron Crowe's semi-autobiographical Almost Famous, and since then has made several movies (including Big Trouble, and the upcoming All The Real Girls and Manic), put together a cabaret act and written a screenplay.

A protean performer so far, she escapes being recognized on the street. And when people do recognize her, they're surprised by what they find. They seem to expect someone more sarcastic, she says.

"I do have my moments," she adds, sweetly.

Deschanel particularly liked her role in Abandon because of "the way she talked. I liked Steve Gaghan's writing so much. And the way she talked reminded me of the way I like to talk on my best, most articulate day."

Gaghan says that when Deschanel talks in real life "I'm making mental notes of lines of hers that I'm gonna steal." He calls her a "naturalistic" performer who will go far.

"I've said to her that she reminds me a little bit of a Cassavetes actress," he says, "which I think is about the highest praise you can give somebody, because she doesn't seem like she's acting."