“The work is like when the word and your impulse and your emotional life all connect up and it’s really like nothing else in the world. It’s like, your whole body is electric. And you chase that.
“But I think the profession is cruel, and particularly to women…”
Like many artists, Zoe Kazan was drawn to acting at an early age:
“I saved all of my money from babysitting and being a camp counselor, and paid for my own acting classes and took the bus before I could drive to acting class.
“I was bound and determined to show my parents that I was serious about becoming an actor.”
Zoe Swicord Kazan was born in Los Angeles, California, to screenwriters Nicholas Kazan and Robin Swicord. She received her BA in Theater from Yale University.
(From her imdb profile; photo from her movie She Said.)
This audio content comes from three short video interviews:
Zoe Kazan Chooses Happiness Over Career
Zoe Kazan Loves the Job, but Hates the Profession
Zoe Kazan: The Cure Is Writing
See list: Off Camera with Sam Jones – Zoe Kazan interview videos.
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Related articles
Sam Jones 0:15 To be any kind of artists, but I think an actor especially, you have to have a direct route inside to the most vulnerable place. But you also have to have a really thick skin…So how do you deal with that contradiction.
Zoe Kazan: I definitely err too far on the sensitive side. So the thick skinned part is really hard for me.
Related: Nicole Kidman: “Most actors are highly sensitive people, but you have this incredible scrutiny. You have to develop a thick skin, but you can’t have a thick skin in your work.”
From Nicole Kidman on fame, and actors as highly sensitive people. Includes other articles about the personality trait of high sensitivity.
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Zoe Kazan 4:31 Okay, so there’s a difference between the work and the profession. Right? The work is like when the word and your impulse and your emotional life all connect up and it’s really like nothing else in the world. It’s like, your whole body is electric. And you chase that.
But I think the profession is cruel, and particularly to women, and it gets harder as you get older…
Dr. Mihaela Ivan Holtz of Creative Minds Psychotherapy writes: “You love being an artist. When you create, you feel at home in your own realm of imagination, fantasy, and storytelling. It feels meaningful and it feels right. At the same time, you don’t necessarily feel happy or fully satisfied with your career.”
From article Building Your Most Creative and Satisfying Life in the Arts.
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Transcript
Narrator (synthetic voice) 0:00
Zoe Kazan was born in Los Angeles, California to screenwriters Nicholas Kazana and Robin Swicord. She received her BA in theater from Yale University. The audio here is from three short video excerpts of a longer interview for The Off Camera Show with Sam Jones.
Sam Jones 0:15
To be any kind of artists, but I think an actor especially, you have to have a direct route inside to the most vulnerable place. But you also have to have a really thick skin to be able to deal with…but to me, that seems in some ways, contradictory that you have to have a pipeline. So how do you deal with that contradiction.
Zoe Kazan 0:35
I definitely err too far on the sensitive side. So the thick skinned part is really hard for me. And I think that writing for me is another way of trying to like, work through the excess.
I feel that if I just had acting, not having a thick enough skin would be a much bigger problem for me. Writing to me feels like a direct antidote to the sort of, morass of time that an actor can feel.
And I think my capacity for joy is so great that if people meet me, when I’m in one place, they would get a kind of impression about me, that speaks to one thing, and then if someone saw me in a different light, I would be a completely different person.
But it’s the same tree, just with leaves or with leaves. And I have this memory of so when I was my depression, my anorexia were really linked. And the when so the worst depression that I went through was when I was in the midst of my eating disorder.
I was in college. And it was my first year of college, and I had never spent a winter in on the east coast before. So I remember like the daffodils coming up, outside my therapist,s office in New Haven, and being like, so angry at them and feeling like they’re a lie. Like, they’re alive.
Things don’t get better. Like the winter is still cold. These flowers have come up and I’m still wearing my parka. Things don’t get better. This spring, this, the heat will never come back. Like I can’t feel my toes. Like I was so angry at these daffodils.
And then the next year, I was in love for the first time. And I was doing much better. And I was like walking into my therapists office and saw the same daffodils and was like, things bloom again. The truth of nature’s all around me like I am one with the universe in we’re all blooming and I’m blooming and you know, it’s the same daffodils.
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Sam Jones 2:51
Your parents being screenwriters that wrote for actors, it’s surprising to me that they would be so against [you being an actor]
Zoe Kazan 2:58 I think they know it’s really hard life. And frankly, I think they also felt like I was talented as a writer…
Sam Jones They wanted to see that happen. Yeah. What message did that send to you?
Zoe Kazan 3:10 It just made me more stubborn about it.
Sam Jones 3:12 Note to self and to all parents out there. Don’t oppose anything vehemently.
Zoe Kazan 3:19 Yeah, I know. They were like, no motorcycles, and no cigarettes. And I was like anything he told me not to do. I was like, Well, I’m going right in for that then.
Sam Jones 3:31 Should have been like no kale and no yardwork.
Zoe Kazan 3:36 I saved all of my money from like babysitting and being like, I was a camp counselor and paid for my own acting classes and took the bus before I could drive to acting class. You know, I was like, bound and determined to show them that I was serious.
I think they were most afraid of me being unhappy. I mean, my dad grew up around actors. And you know, because his dad was a director and was and I don’t think and they had friends who were actors.
I don’t think they felt like anybody was really happy, particularly actresses. And yeah, I think they were worried. And I would be if my child came home and said, I want to be an actor, I think really my worst nightmare.
I think it’s a really tough horrible profession. Yeah, I really do.
Sam Jones 4:28 Does it still feel that way to you?
Zoe Kazan 4:31 Okay, so there’s a difference between the work and the profession. Right? The work is like when the word and your impulse and your emotional life all connect up and it’s really like nothing else in the world.
It’s like, your whole body is electric. And you chase that.
But I think the profession is cruel, and particularly to women, and it gets harder as you get older, which is horrible – like DPs [Directors of Photography] become like more venerated as they get older.
And really, that’s how it should be with actors too. And for some reason, we don’t want to tell the stories of older people.
And you are being judged on like your looks and your sexual viability when that has no connection to the actual work.
And most actresses I know are miserable. They are miserable with their careers, you’re encouraged to feel like you’re always on a treadmill, trying to get somewhere that you’ll never get – there’s like climbing that mountain. And that’s horrible.
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Sam Jones 5:39
If you say no [to being in a project], you’re pushing away this work that so many people want, right?
Zoe Kazan 5:44
I am very generous when I read things. When work comes to me. I’m often like, well, I could figure it out, I could make it work. I go into a place where I get like, I can fix it. I can make it work.
And I think I stopped wanting to do that at a certain point. But I also feel and maybe this goes to what we were talking about before, over on camera, like, I think in the last three years in my 30s I suddenly felt like my life had value outside of my work.
Sam Jones 6:20
Really? Yeah, you didn’t feel that way before?
Zoe Kazan 6:23
I think it was really hard for me to feel like I had value outside of my accomplishments. I was a I was like a really precocious kid. I was like, an ace student I went to an Ivy League school. Like, I think there was something in ingrained in me…
Sam Jones 6:41
This is how people would perceive value in you is through the work you did, right. Just you being you.
Zoe Kazan 6:46
Right, that, and also, how can I be helpful to someone else – like a real pleaser? Well, you know, love to please teacher. So I think that my sort of like workaholic-ness was attached to that, like, I want to leave something of meaning behind I want to keep building my like, quote unquote, career.
And I don’t know, in the last few years, I was like, oh, like I only get one life. And my experience of it really matters and my happiness matters and time with friends is as important as whatever.
I think that there’s a false construct and idea that you can leave a legacy behind of some kind – and freeing myself from that has allowed me to think a lot more about how I want to live my life.
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Listen to more episodes of The Creative Mind Audio Podcast.
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Douglas Eby (M.A./Psychology) is author of the The Creative Mind series of sites which provide “Information and inspiration to help creative people thrive.”
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