Zoe Cassavetes - Career

Career

Cassavetes' first experience with the filmmaking business was at the age of one, when she had an uncredited role in her late father John Cassavetes' film Minnie and Moskowitz as a baby girl, but it was not until 1991 that she had her first acting role in a film, Ted & Venus, which was followed with minor roles in the films Noises Off and The Thing Called Love. In 1994, she and her filmmaking friend Sofia Coppola created and hosted the Comedy Central television series Hi Octane, a skit and variety show that featured guests including Keanu Reeves, Beastie Boys and Martin Scorsese. Hi Octane lasted for only one season but is remembered as one of the first series to be entirely shot in digital video.

Her directorial debut was in 2000 on the Sundance Film Festival-featured short film Men Make Women Crazy Theory, but she is best known as the director and writer of the 2007 comedy-romance film Broken English, which featured Parker Posey and Gena Rowlands, Cassavetes' mother. Her inspiration for Broken English came from her perception of other people's impression that happiness can only come from being in love with someone, saying: "I got caught up and swept up in the whole idea that I didn't have any worth until I found that person ... So I just wanted to make a nice, little portrait about what happens to someone when they get caught up in all of that." She was nominated for the 2008 Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay but lost to Diablo Cody for Juno.

In 2012 she was invited to participate in Miu Miu's ad campaign The Women's Tales. The short she created for the project The Powder Room premiered at the 69th Venice International Film Festival.

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