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Kat Dennings: giving vapid portrayals of teenage girls the high-heeled boot
Interview, August, 2007 by Julia Cosgrove
"My youth is slipping away," Kat Dennings says just days before her 21st birthday. "My adulthood is upon me!" Dennings can't help but crack jokes. Self-deprecating and droll, she is probably best known for playing sassy adolescents akin to her character in The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005). Her latest project is the film Charlie Bartlett, the story of a delinquent rich kid (Anton Yelchin) who quickly charms the student body at his new public high school into treating him as their psychiatrist. Dennings plays Susan Gardner, daughter of the school's principal (Robert Downey Jr.) and Bartlett's love interest--a role the actress insists she played in earnest: "This is the only role I've gotten to play as the straight man."
It's hard to imagine Dennings doing unfunny, given her natural proclivity for sarcasm. And it was hard for her parents to imagine her acting at all; they initially deemed their daughter's career choice "the worst idea ever," Dennings says. "They probably wanted me to be a scientist," the actress recalls. Mom and Dad caved nonetheless. "[Acting] is the only thing in my life that I consistently love," she says. "Well, besides kittens and puppies."
Julia Cosgrove is a San Francisco-based writer and editor.
COPYRIGHT 2007 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
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