Zooey Deschanel

I don’t want to be a babe. I don’t want vanity to ever get in the way, because I think to maintain that, you have to be aware of yourself all the time, and that gets in the way of acting. My job’s not to be the beautiful person. My job is to be the best actor I can be.

I don’t really like to go out very much. I’m not scandalous. I’m not, like, in this to be famous. I also find it so embarrassing when you read about people and it’s like they were so trashed at Skybar and stumbling around. I don’t want to be that person. That’s just so embarrassing to have that written about you.

It’s a lot harder to do an ensemble because your energy is going in so many different places, and you have to cover everybody. You have to sort of split your attention.

I don’t think I’m very much like anyone else, really. I’m sure there are aspects of other actors that I share, but I don’t see anybody else and go, “Damn, they stole my thing”. I’m me, and I like that there are people who have an appreciation for that.

It’s an addiction. I love clothes. I like to go down Melrose and look in all the windows and I go to different flea markets. I have lots of costumes. You never know when you’re going to have to dress up like a milkmaid from the 1600s.

I don’t want to go to another rollercoaster ride of a movie. If I want that, I’ll go to Magic Mountain. I’m really interested in the young directors that are doing different things in cinema. I think the movies people will hold onto are the Rushmore (1998)s and the Being John Malkovich (1999)s. Those are the kind of films I want to do; that’s what I’m passionate about.

I’m a bit of a P.T. Barnum. I make stars out of everyone.

Never have doubted it, even when the plane crash happened. I wasn’t mad at God. I just knew that there was a reason that I didn’t know about why it happened.

I’m not a mean person, but I have a capacity for it.

I’ll be a nun, raise my daughter, and make albums.

I was motivated by just thinking that if you had all this external success that everyone would love you and everything would be peaceful and wonderful.

The weird thing is, when Darrell Hammond or Will Ferrell or Dana Carvey did an impersonation of a president, no one assumed it was personal, but because Sarah Palin and I are both women and people think women are meaner to each other, everyone assumed it was personal.

You can only live on the past for so long, and we kind of stretched our luck on that. We think we’re on the way back, but it’s just a matter of how quickly things come together. Common sense tells you it’s not going to happen overnight because we’re trying to catch up.

Being jealous of a beautiful woman is not going to make you more beautiful.

I don’t know, I like to go on really different types of dates. Going someplace new or some new part of the city, something that’s not your average thing. Something where you just go have an adventure together.

The joy we get as actors is out of transforming ourselves into something that’s not necessarily anything true to ourselves. And it’s a power – not being yourself, and being in the role; it’s just like another prop.

I don’t know what it feels like not to have a great family support system – I was lucky to have that.

Love should be an inspiration, not an obligation.

If I were running ‘The View’, I’d fire Rosie O’Donnell. I mean, I’d look at her right in that fat, ugly face of hers, I’d say ‘Rosie, you’re fired.’

I think women are natural caretakers. They take care of everybody. They take care of their husbands and their kids and their dogs, and don’t spend a lot of time just getting back and taking time out.

In Los Angeles, they don’t want you to fail, they want you to die.