As an acclaimed actor, director, and producer, Zoë Kravitz has had a tightly focused career. Lately, though, she’s been letting loose and having fun—with pretty great results. Her first Emmy nomination, for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series, came from a three-episode run on The Studio, on Apple TV+, in which Kravitz plays an egomaniacal version of herself, accidentally indulging in an “old-school Hollywood buffet” of drugs, getting sky-high on mushrooms, and calling Seth Rogen a “Black Jewish queen.”
“I ad-libbed that line. I’m pretty proud of it,” says Kravitz, 36.
Though she’s had many memorable roles, in prestigious shows such as HBO’s Big Little Lies (season 3 is not happening yet; kindly stop asking, people!) and in the tragically short-lived single season of High Fidelity (“It just sucks,” says Kravitz of the show’s early demise), her performance in The Studio—in which a convincingly stoned Kravitz refers to her fellow industry folk as “skin sausages”—might just be the one that brings home the gold.
Kravitz is Zooming in from a film set in Pittsburgh, looking as off-duty cool as one would expect her to be in a black cap and an oversize black tee, her tattooed hands adorned with not one but two diamond-encrusted pinkie rings by London-based jeweler Jessica McCormack. She is in the final stages of shooting David Leitch’s How to Rob a Bank, alongside Nicholas Hoult, her former Mad Max: Fury Road costar, and though the political action-crime thriller doesn’t necessarily lend itself to comedy, Kravitz is going there anyway. At least during her downtime. A cinephile who cites everything from The Little Rascals to Peter Sellers’s The Party to Mean Girls as her go-to comedies, she admits to having a penchant for shtick.
This might seem counterintuitive, considering her public persona as a street-style maven and sphinx-like ambassador for Saint Laurent, but Kravitz, a self-proclaimed “weird theater kid,” says she has always been goofy. When she was growing up in Topanga, California, her mother, the actor Lisa Bonet, was strict about what her daughter could watch and for how long, so the young Kravitz would entertain herself by dressing up and creating impromptu characters and scenes. “They were always inspired by movies,” she says. She recently found a photo of herself wearing a green wig, antennas, and wings and carrying a rubber knife, and another of her in a bonnet walking outside and pretending she was in a secret garden. Her takeaway as an adult? Boredom can be a good thing.
Kravitz comes from an esteemed family in the entertainment world—aside from Bonet and Kravitz’s rocker dad, Lenny, there is her grandmother Roxie Roker, who starred in the 1970s television show The Jeffersons. Since her first official role, a bit part in the 2007 romantic comedy No Reservations, Kravitz has been working steadily across film and television, making her presence felt in big blockbusters like The Batman and X-Men: First Class while delving into writing and directing. Her 2024 psychological thriller, Blink Twice, was a social commentary on a Me Too world and overflowed with feminist rage.
Now audiences can see Kravitz in Caught Stealing, Darren Aronofsky’s black comedy based on the book by Charlie Huston. Set in New York’s East Village in the ’90s, the film stars Austin Butler as a former baseball player turned bartender who gets himself into a world of pain while watching his neighbor’s cat. Kravitz is along for part of the ride as his unflappable, cigarette-smoking, potentially serious but reluctant girlfriend.
Aronofsky was drawn to Kravitz’s cool factor before realizing how disarming she was. “I felt Austin’s Hank character was a small-town kid who had become a New Yorker, and that having him date a real New York City–born and –raised woman would create lots of good drama,” said the director, admitting that he actually had no idea where Kravitz was from. “Then I met her. She came over, and we instantly connected; I just knew she could kind of fill that spirit.” Aronofsky didn’t feel the need to screen-test the chemistry between Butler and Kravitz. “I instinctively felt that it would work.” In fact, he was so comfortable with Kravitz that he offered her the role via text message. His recollection about this exchange is fuzzy, but Kravitz remembers it well. “He sent me the script by text, which I thought was funny,” she says. “After I read it, I texted him, ‘I think it’s great and the character’s great.’ He wrote back, ‘Cool, you want to do it?’ ”
The cast of stars in the film includes Liev Schreiber, Vincent D’Onofrio, Regina King, Matt Smith, and Griffin Dunne, as well as newcomer Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, aka Bad Bunny. “When I saw him and what he looks like with the hair and everything, I was like, it’s so cool,” says Kravitz. Aronofsky, meanwhile, is quick to point out the merits of the Puerto Rican rapper’s latest album; recently, he and Butler attended Bad Bunny’s music residency in San Juan.
Alaïa dress.
Since releasing Blink Twice, Kravitz has been approaching films differently than she did previously. “I think actors are quite protected from the process,” she says. “When I was acting in Caught Stealing, my focus went to different things, which made it more fun, because I was just so aware of how hard it is to make a movie and the kind of pressure that the director is under.” Kravitz even spent some of her days off on the set, which included replicas of Kim’s Video and other long-gone East Village haunts, just so she could soak up Aronofsky’s directorial style.
It is not uncommon for directors to liken a big release to “birthing a baby,” as Kravitz has previously done, but one gets the sense that Blink Twice reshaped other parts of her life as well—and how could it not? It’s been exhaustively reported that her relationship with Channing Tatum, Blink Twice’s leading man, ended soon after the film’s debut. When asked if some of the more taxing parts of fame—social media snark, constant scrutiny—ever preclude her from doing what she wants to do, Kravitz demurs. “Working artists are very lucky, but when you do it on this scale, there are pros and cons,” she says. “Personally, the fact that I can always return to the reason I’m making art makes it all okay and also keeps me from feeling gross or like I’ve given myself away. It’s a complicated, weird existence, but I think as long as I continue to acknowledge that part of it, it’s okay. Also, life is weird. We’re just skin sausages.”
If we’re all skin sausages, Kravitz is a particularly glamorous one. Fashion has always been a massive part of her personal expression, but lately she doesn’t want to think about it as much. Or she’d rather let her stylist do the thinking. Expect to still see her walking around the city in The Row, and certainly on the red carpet in looks by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello, whom she considers a dear friend. But she wants to transition into a more uniform phase for her day-to-day activities, a testament perhaps to her ongoing evolution. (By the way, it’s worth noting that Kravitz doesn’t buy into the broader perception that she’s the epitome of cool. “I’m very honored that that word is associated with me often, but the other day I came out of the bathroom and my fly was down, which happens maybe 75 percent of the time,” she says, laughing. “Those are the moments when I think it’s funny that people think I’m cool.”)
Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello dress, necklace, and tights; hairstylist’s own headscarf (throughout).
Though her next few months are packed—among her many projects is developing How to Save a Marriage, a script sent to her by Robert Pattinson—Kravitz’s approach is more relaxed. Her goal is to spend more time away from the litany of very addictive devices and apps, while trying to regain a sense of childhood wonder. Sometimes that involves peeling off in the middle of the day to see a movie (“I’m that annoying person always taking notes in the theater”) or losing herself in Justin Bieber’s latest album; other days, it includes reading books on love and relationships, as she is prone to doing recently. Occasionally, though, wonder is all about expanding human consciousness…for research. (It’s called putting in the time for that potential Emmy, y’all.) “I actually hadn’t taken mushrooms in a while, and when I was reading the Studio script, I decided to take a little bit and read it at the same time to remember how it felt.” Verdict? “It was fun—a very free place to be!”
Hair by Guido for Zara Hair; makeup by Pat McGrath for Pat McGrath Labs; manicure by Jin Soon Choi for JINsoon Beauty at Home Agency.
Production credits throughout cover stories: Produced by PRODn; producers: Steven Dam, Wesley Torrance, Stephanie Ge, Mitch Baker; Steven Meisel Studio manager: Ruk Richards; Steven Meisel Studio art director: Paulie Browne; photo assistants: Jeremy Hall, John Griffith, Alex Hopkins, Jeremy Gould, Alex Johnstone; digital technician: Kevin Lavallade; retouching: Gloss Studio; fashion assistants: Caroline Hampton, Adrian Reyna, Raquel Castellanos; production assistants: Daniel Weiner, Aaron Pimentel, Noah Conboy, Torrance Hall, Sierra Sky, Sean English; hair colorist for Julia Garner: Lena Ott; manicure assistants: Christina Mallett, Elena Leger; tailor: Raul Zevallos at R-Zee Tailoring.
