14 DAY TRIAL // Zoe Kravitz, the gorgeous daughter of Lenny Kravitz and ex Lisa Bonet, has been acting in movies for years, but 2015 is definitely her best year so far. She had 2 movies coming out before “Mad Max: Fury Road,” and she has 4 more before the year is up.
Because of her famous parents, she always has to deal with people’s assumption that she only gets parts because of nepotism. She doesn’t, she tells the latest issue of Nylon magazine, and her failed audition for Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises” is proof of that.
Zoe wanted in the final Batman installment
“The Dark Knight Rises” came out in 2012 and was the conclusion of Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy, with Christian Bale in the role of the Caped Crusader. To say that it was one of the most anticipated movies of that year would be an understatement: “The Dark Knight Rises” ended up being less than flawless than fans expected, but it was still a resounding success.
Zoe too wanted to be in it, but she was denied the chance of an audition. As in, she was told from the start that she would not be in the movie, without as much as getting the chance to do a reading.
Here’s how she explains it: “In the last Batman movie, they told me that I couldn’t get an audition for a small role they were casting because they weren’t ‘going urban.’ It was like, ‘What does that have to do with anything?’ I have to play the role like, ‘Yo, what’s up, Batman? What’s going on wit chu?’”
The rejection discouraged her, but not for long. She tells the magazine she’s determined to prove she’s a serious artist who should get a fair chance, and that she deserves to have her own movie instead of just playing supportive roles like the best friend of the leading lady, or the ghetto-born girl or the funny girl.
Nepotism doesn’t apply to her
As Zoe puts it, if anything, her last name only made things worse for her in the industry, at first because she rejected it and erroneously tried to rebel against her true self by identifying with the white culture, and lately because everyone just assumes that it’s what’s getting her all these amazing parts.
George Miller’s “Mad Max” movie, considered one of the most visually stunning releases of 2015, is proof that nepotism doesn’t apply to her, she argues. George Miller doesn’t care who your mother and father are if you don’t have the skills and you don’t have the endurance to last 12-hour shoots in the desert, every day for more than 6 full months, she explains.
That said, she’s thrilled she got the part and she’s grateful for sharing this experience with the movie’s cast, which also includes Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy, Nicholas Hoult, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Riley Keough.
The memory of the nights she spent with Hoult, he knitting and she crocheting, while watching “Breaking Bad” marathons, will be with her for ever.