In character: Zoe Levin
MUI MUI Full look
Actress Zoe Levin teams up with longtime friend Tommy Dorfman for an exploration in transformation.
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Stepping into 6 different roles in a day, Levin transforms herself into classic and iconic American film roles. In a cozy conversation, the photographer and subject discuss lives as performers. ––Dio Anthony
TOMMY DORFMAN: So, acting why?
ZOE LEVIN: You know people always ask me that and I truly don’t know why or how this happened. But, um as a kid I was really involved with anything and everything. I was a competitive figure skater, I did gymnastics, I was on the soccer team, I was on the basketball team, I played lacrosse, I did everything. But I was always kind of like a ham and had been taking acting classes since I was six. I would always beg my Mom to go to open auditions because I had a friend who was working as a professional actress in Chicago. And she was like no “when you’re old enough to do it on your own, you can figure that out”. So when I was thirteen, I took the train down to an open audition, got cast in a play and then an agent came and saw me and asked if I wanted to sign. I started auditioning and then it just kind of started happening for me. I think like the second or third audition I went on was the first movie I ever got cast in, which was also being done as a play at Looking Glass Theatre by David Schwimmer (AKA Ross from Friends) and I was very, very excited. So I spent my sophomore year of high school shooting the movie in Detroit and then doing the play at Looking Glass. So yeah, I worked in Chicago doing mostly theater, commercials that would roll through here and there and then decided to continue to pursue it and also go to college at the same time. I chose Loyola Marymount. I just kind of kept working once I moved out to LA and then I dropped out of school because of the play in New York.
DORFMAN: Which play was that?
LEVIN: The Commons of Pensacola. Which was always my dream. My first AIM screen name was BroadwayBabe1124.
DORFMAN: Amazing.
LEVIN: Yeah and I’m like, I’m literally on Broadway.
DORFMAN: Do you want to go back to Broadway?
LEVIN: Um, well I think, you know it technically was off-broadway.
DORFMAN: Right.
LEVIN: It was at the Manhattan Theatre club. I would love to do another play. I think it works a totally different muscle in acting, but I’m just so grateful that’s kind of where my training came from, because as an actress, I really use my space to my advantage and I feel like I learned that and have that confidence. Just from all of the theater experience that I have.
Pulp Fiction
DORFMAN: What about the actual art of using your body and language as a vessel to tell stories and bring life to characters do you love? It’s a hard question, right? I think about this a lot for myself too but…
LEVIN: Yeah, I mean I think that’s one of those things that is somewhat of my natural instincts. I’m a very physical actress and it’s just amazing how you know, even let’s say an audition tape. Everyone now is self-taping and I have friends that I do audition tapes with and a lot of the times the first time they do it with me they’re like “Oh my god, you can do that? You can move around like that?” Because I think a lot of people who start out in the film world are just told to be still. To not really use the space and body. But your body language speaks more than the words.
DORFMAN: Totally.
LEVIN: For example, Bonding. I’m not strutting down the street In my everyday life. But I put on that corset and all of the sudden my posture was amazing.I was like Superwoman.That to me is so empowering to be able to use your body to make this character come to life.
DORFMAN: Do you feel by playing these different types of roles you learn from them and groom them into your life outside of the work?
LEVIN: Yes.
DORFMAN: Can you share some experiences you’ve had or traits or things that you’ve learned in the process of working on something whether it’s Bonding or different tv shows?
LEVIN: I think what I find really interesting about acting in general and getting scripts is that the older I get and the more I experience life, my taste changes. I still get scripts to play eighteen and it’s just interesting how I can look back and be like wow at eighteen I probably would have been like this is it. But now that I’m in my mid-twenties it’s like my taste has evolved and changed as I’ve evolved and changed as a person.So that has been really interesting to me because I’ll notice that when I get a script and but I can’t connect to this younger side of me, it’s because of my life experience that I’ve had since then. It’s hard to play naive.
American Psycho
DORFMAN: What are you looking for?
LEVIN: I’ve learned a lot in playing different characters. I didn’t really notice how much it affected my real life and my real personality until months later after wrapping the project. I don’t feel like whatever character I just played, but it takes a while to get it out of your system.
DORFMAN: Yeah, I’ve had that experience too recently. I’ve been working on a new project and I kept in my character earrings. Yesterday I was like I have to let this stuff go, I need to take it off for the weekend and put it back on later. It’s funny how these very little things change us. I was taping for something today and posturing the way this character Jesse I’m playing postures, which she leads with her nose and is kind of more scrunched out. So what are you looking for with future roles? Obviously, we exist in a world where we don’t have a lot of autonomy or we don’t have a lot of control over the opportunities that are brought to us as actors. So, putting that aside if you could pinpoint that type of character you’d be most interested in exploring next, what does that look like to you today?
LEVIN: That’s a really hard question for me to answer because I feel like I don’t even know it until it falls into my lap. I don’t write myself so I think that’s something I should maybe start doing and exploring. What kind of story I want to tell, what kind of person do I want to bring into this world and perform as..
DORFMAN: Alternatively, are there roles in movies or television or plays that you’ve read that you would want to either revive or play? Roles that you think about, that you fantasize about? I know for me, for a long time on my vision board was Prior in Angels in America. I want to play him. Now I think I want to play Harper, you know things change. Or Macbeth.
LEVIN: I mean I’m always down for a Macbeth reboot. When we were doing the cabaret look for the shoot, the performer has really always been such a dream of mine. Some sort of musical movie. I just feel like with the state of the world right now, I find it very hard to watch disturbing, dark movies. I just want to dance and sing and be choreographed. I find that when I read scripts those are the parts that I’m really most attracted to. Something I can train for, something I can really use my body in. Have fun with.
DORFMAN: The characters that you portrayed in this editorial aside from the performer, what about those characters fascinates you and excites you? And we can sort of go down the list if that’s helpful.
The Liberated Woman
LEVIN: Who was number one? Oh, the liberated woman.
DORFMAN: Yeah, which is funny because I think that specific reference was an amalgamation of things. But, I was thinking of a movie that I don’t even think you’d seen and yet you encapsulated it so well. I was thinking about An Unmarried Woman.
LEVIN: Yeah the category was the liberated woman. Which you pulled from an unmarried woman. And then I sent you some stills of Kirsten Dunst in Eternal Sunshine, just kind of dancing in her underwear, that’s a very iconic, liberated woman vibe. And I feel especially in this day and age being able to play a woman who feels empowered, who has autonomy, who feels freedom and lightness and just joy, I think would be really fun. It was just so fun to shoot that, we weren’t filming it, but in a way it felt like we were.
DORFMAN: I felt like you were so transformative in all of these roles. I was so in awe of your vulnerability especially with our take on Dorothy and our take on The Wizard of Oz. The way that you embodied that character as a more mature and astute person was so impressive to me.
Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz
LEVIN: I feel like whenever you show up to set, I learned this when I was younger, I would have this idea of what it was going to be like and I would have it all fantasized in my head. That’s what we do as artists, we daydream essentially. But I’ve tried to let that really go over the years because I’ve come to find that it’s never going to be what you expect it to be. Just to show up with an open mind and an open heart and be willing to play.
DORFMAN: Hundred percent
LEVIN: Which you let me do a lot…
DORFMAN: Thank you for that. To me, the core of acting and performing is play. In a very Michaell Checkhov way. It’s just being a kid again.
LEVIN: One Hundred percent. That day was some of the most fun I’ve had within the year.
DORFMAN: Same!
LEVIN: I got to play so many different characters, and that’s the way I really love to work. Like boom, boom, boom let’s get it, let’s do it. Let’s change into this moment, let’s change into that one, and being able to switch it on and turn it off and just the pacing of it all was so fun. It’s really all about the people around you and how into it they are, and how safe you feel playing in the space. Some of the times you show up to work and it doesn’t feel like a safe space and you have to just turn it on anyway.
DORFMAN: Or you don’t feel well or you’ve had a weird morning... All of those things. I think about a lot of that. Doing a play for example is such a great way to train yourself to act under any condition, because you’re doing it eight times a week, and you’re not able to take five. You have to go no matter what, no matter you’re sick, whether you’re sad, lethargic, it doesn’t matter. You sort of have to be of service to the story and to the company of actors you’re working with no matter what.
LEVIN: Yeah and I think that goes for being on set too.
Liza, The Performer
DORFMAN: For sure.
LEVIN: You don’t really know who’s going through what and all. With both the cast and the crew.
DORFMAN: Right.
LEVIN: Even if it’s a small cast and crew, just having grace and patience and focus is important. You know, we’re human and these things take a long time to come to life and to shoot. There’s a lot of sitting around and waiting and thinking and thinking. Sometimes it’s just not your day, and you’ve gotta show up anyway and turn it on.
DORFMAN: Totally. If you could pick a decade to have been born in and work in cinema, what decade would you think you’d choose?
LEVIN: I think probably the early 2000s or maybe the 80s. I feel like a lot of women in the 80s were treated as if they were disposable.The characters that we are so familiar with and classics are just gone now. A lot of the John Hughes movies––Molly Ringwald is an exception, she was obviously a staple. But I’ve watched these amazing rom coms from the 80s and it’s like–– what happened to that woman? I think that kind of turned me off. I think there was like this emergence in the 90s and 2000s of more fascinating women characters and more people wanting to see that as well. I was saying the other day how Kirsten Dunst is one of my favorite actresses.
DORFMAN: Me too, I love her.
LEVIN: I absolutely love her and I feel like she had this time period where movies were still a thing and people were going to movie theaters. I also like how she made her own choices and that’s the career I want to have. Yeah, maybe my agents aren’t in love with the script, but maybe there’s something about it that’s really enticing to me. I wanna be able to make that choice. That is something I want to do and I know that I want to explore that.
AMERICAN BEAUTY
DORFMAN: Completely. I think it’s so brave to think that way, and to approach your work in that way and play the long game.
LEVIN: I always hear the saying–– it’s a marathon not a sprint.
DORFMAN: Exactly!
LEVIN: I tell myself that every single day.
DORFMAN: What movie do you watch every year no matter what?
LEVIN: There’s a couple, Spirited Away, which I actually watched last night. Eternal Sunshine, UP and Inside Out.
DORFMAN: Amazing. How about when you can’t sleep? Do you put anything on?
LEVIN: I’m not very good at that. I’m not very good at watching mindless television. If I’m going to watch something, I am focused. I’m sitting there and I’m focused, I’m not like la de da de da… I don’t understand how people can watch Grey’s Anatomy a hundred million times.
DORFMAN: Yeah, I have comfort shows, right? For two years I would watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s while I fell asleep every night.
LEVIN: Awww.
DORFMAN: It was very cozy to me.
LEVIN: Also, I feel like in quarantine it’s been such a great opportunity to have a bucket list of movies that are classics that I have embarrassingly never seen. So I’ve taken time to watch a bunch of Hitchcock movies.
DORFMAN: Can you text me that bucket list?
LEVIN: Yeah, I will.
DORFMAN: Text me a list of your five watches that I can throw in here.
LEVIN: Oh, 9 to 5 is another one I watch every year.
DORFMAN: I love 9 to 5. I don’t have any other questions, I just wanted this to be an easy, breezy, beautiful little talk on acting.
LEVIN: How’d I do?
DORFMAN: You did great.
This editorial took place in Los Angeles. Photography & Interview by Tommy Dorfman Styling by Chris Horan Hair by Sylvia Wheeler & Makeup by Kali Kennedy.