Newsmaker

Every Friday, we choose an alum who has been making headlines—for better or for worse.
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Zoe Kazan ’05

If you haven’t heard of Zoe Kazan ’05 yet, get ready. It’s not just her Hollywood-famous last name (grandpa Elia Kazan directed On the Waterfront and A Streetcar Named Desire). Zoe herself appeared in It’s Complicated last year with Meryl Streep ’75MFA and in Revolutionary Road with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. She’s currently starring on Broadway with Christopher Walken and Hurt Locker star Anthony Mackie in Irish playwright Martin McDonagh’s A Behanding in Spokane. (Plot summary: “Carmichael… has been searching for his missing left hand for almost half a century. Enter two bickering lovebirds… with a hand to sell… and we’re set for a hilarious rollercoaster of love, hate, desperation and hope.” All right then.)

And this weekend, the indie film The Exploding Girl opens in theaters with Kazan in the title role. Director Bradley Rust Gray wrote the part for her, about a college student struggling with epilepsy and romance; Kazan named the character Ivy. (We couldn’t confirm reports that Gray rejected her first suggestion, Eli.) If those acting chops aren’t enough for a 26-year-old, Kazan has also written a play, Absalom, which began as a class project during her junior year at Yale, in a course taught by playwright Donald Margulies.

Filed under performing arts, alumnae, celebrities
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