Nora Zehetner: How does a former math nerd make it as a big-screen femme fatale?

Interview, April, 2005 by Leslie Cafferty

Nora Zehetner's looks make her a natural femme fatale. The sloe-eyed 24-year-old actress's lithe neck, winsome lips, and ski-jump nose seem ready-made for film noir, even if she's best known for her role as Laynie Hart, the sweet-natured love interest of Ephram Brown on the WB teen drama Everwood. But while other prime-time players find the transition from tween-TV to dramatic-film roles challenging, Zehetner is starring in the perfect bridge: Rian Johnson's Brick, about a teenage boy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who infiltrates a teenage crime ring in search of his girlfriend's killer. The film, which won the Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision at the Sundance Film Festival, is written in noirish period dialogue and features Zehetner as a woman of mystery--albeit one still in high school. "It's a classic detective story," she says, "but with a twist."

Born in El Paso, Texas, Zehetner was raised in Dallas, where she attended the Texas Academy of Math and Science, a two-year post-high school program for students interested in engineering or medicine. She credits her academic adviser with encouraging her to move to Los Angeles to pursue acting when she was 18, but she recently discovered that her desire to act first reared its head a decade earlier. "I found my old journal from when I was 8," she recalls. "There's this entry from when I was sick and my parents couldn't take me to an open casting call. I'd written, '1 hate my parents.' I totally forgot about that. It's strange for an 8-year-old to feel that strongly, but it helps explain where I am today."

A self-confessed movie addict who forgoes cable because, she says, it keeps her couch-bound, Zehetner will also appear in the upcoming postdivorce reconciliation film Conversations With Other Women, playing the younger version of Helena Bonham Carter's character. (Though Zehetner and Bonham Carter share similar profiles, it's The O.C.'s Rachel Bilson for whom Zehetner is most often mistaken.) And then there is Fifty Pills, a college comedy that's more in keeping with Zehetner's personal taste. "I'm a closeted teen-movie fan," she admits. "Not the bad-bad ones, but the good-bad ones. How great is Can't Buy Me Love?"

Leslie Cafferty wrote about filmmaker Xan Cassavetes in the February issue. Above: Clothes by LUCKY BRAND JEANS. Opposite: Dress by DIESEL, Cosmetics by M*A*C. Hair products by SEBASTIAN. Styling: SCOTT FREE/therexagency.com, Hair: ALEX DIZON/ artistsbytimothypriano.com, Makeup: BILLY B./artistsbytimothypriano.com, Special thanks: 5TH AND SUNSET STUDIOS, Fashion details page 157, Photos: JOE TORENO.