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.

For a while I was like, “Oh my God, anyone that would release an album as an actor is the biggest fool ever”, but I happened to have sung all my life before I was an actor. Why are musicians allowed to become actors? No one ever gives them flack for that.

People say: “Oh yeah, jobs for the boys”. I wish. You’ve got to fight even harder with a family like mine.

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 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.

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.

Fame for fame’s sake is a completely empty experience. Fame should be a by-product (and not necessarily a good one) of achieving something extraordinary.

I was thinking about why I make movies, and I know why. Life is hard. It’s nice to go escape and have a good time at the movies. If I can give people a movie about hope, love and the future, then I’ve done my job.

I am working on a dress sock line of funky, colorful, cool designs.

The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn’t the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.

Whatever the occasion, [the Queen] has a face which demonstrably says ‘I don’t give a royal s**t.’

I’m a bit of a slag… Some people don’t think it’s very nice, but I don’t care… I’ve got hormones, and sex is there, so why not? Sex is good. Everybody does it, and everybody should!

In LA, where I live, it’s all about perfectionism. Beauty is now defined by your bones sticking out of your decolletage. For that to be the standard is really perilous for women.

Gay people don’t actually try to convert people. That’s Jehovah’s Witnesses you’re thinking of.

When you’re acting, you’re a character and you can hide behind that. Music is who you are right then and there – you can’t hide.

[On singing in Walk the Line] The director came to us and he said “No, I really want you guys to learn to sing. To learn to play instruments and I want you to record an album”. and that is what… and I just absolutely was just gob-smacked and I said .. “I don’t know. I can’t do that.” And he said “Well I want you to try.” Now that’s the thing for me. If someone asks me to try, I will always try.

What makes us a bit nervous is, in this instant age, to release something that might take more than one listen. Where everything is instantly judged on YouTube or something! It’s a bit like releasing a horse and cart on a racetrack.

How do you expect me to see your nasty-looking eye ball if you don’t look straight ahead?

I literally change my phone number 10 times a year and I don’t ever save my contacts.

I am now determined to do really weird parts but I think I overdo it in auditions so nobody really trusts me!

Abstaining from sex had to zen my body. I ain’t giving, so don’t ask, I don’t lend my body. He gotta be king status to get in my body.