Zooey Claire Deschanel is an American actress and musician. She made her film debut in Mumford (1999) and had a supporting role in Cameron Crowe's film Almost Famous (2000). Deschanel is known for her deadpan roles in comedy films such as The Good Girl (2002), The New Guy (2002), Elf (2003), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), Failure to Launch (2006), Yes Man (2008), The Happening (2008), 500 Days of Summer (2009) and Our Idiot Brother (2011). She has also ventured into dramatic film territory with Manic (2001), All the Real Girls (2003), Winter Passing (2005), Bridge to Terabithia (2007) and The Driftless Area (2015). From 2011 to 2018, she starred as Jess Day on the Fox sitcom New Girl, for which she received nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and three Golden Globe Awards.
Zooey Claire Deschanel was born in Los Angeles, California on January 17, 1980, the younger daughter of cinematographer and director Caleb Deschanel and actress Mary Jo Deschanel (née Weir). Her paternal grandfather was French, from Oullins, Rhône, and her paternal grandmother came from a Quaker family; she also has Swiss, Dutch, English, Irish, and other French ancestry. She was named after Zooey Glass, the protagonist of J. D. Salinger's 1961 novella Franny and Zooey. Her older sister is actress Emily Deschanel, who starred in the Fox crime comedy-drama series Bones.
Deschanel lived in Los Angeles, but spent much of her childhood traveling because her father shot films on location. She later said that she:
... hated all the traveling... I'm really happy now that I had the experience, but at the time I was just so miserable to have to leave my friends in Los Angeles and go to places where they didn't have any food I liked or things I was used to.
She attended Crossroads, a private preparatory school in Santa Monica, where she befriended future co-stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Kate Hudson. She sang throughout high school, planning to pursue a career in musical theatre and attending French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts. She attended Northwestern University for nine months before dropping out to pursue acting.
| Date of Birth | 17th January 1980 |
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| Age | 44 Years |
| Zodiac Sign | Capricorn |
| Country | United States of America |
| Current City | Los Angeles |
| Birth Place | Los Angeles |
| Religion | Judaism |
| Nationality | United States of America |
| Citizenship | United States of America |
| Language | American English |
| Reference | IMDB |
| Spouses | Ben Gibbard |
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| Education |
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| Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences, Northwestern University |
| Instruments | voice |
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| Occupation | actor, singer-songwriter, musician, voice actor, singer, television actor, film actor, recording artist, model, fashion model |
| Awards |
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