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In person, actress/singer Zooey Deschanel is as unassumingly pretty and inexplicably beguiling as any one of her characters. Within minutes of taking her seat at yesterday’s lunch on the rooftop terrace of the Gramercy Park Hotel—wearing a shrunken Boy by Band of Outsiders blazer, flared black miniskirt, and towering Chloé Mary Janes—it became clear why she was chosen as the new face of the British makeup brand, Rimmel. Yes, she is funny (“They make boats out of this stuff, how heavy can it be?” she says, when asked about the weight of her solid-wood platforms), but she is also truly obsessed with makeup.
“I need this!” she cries gleefully of having discovered the company’s transfer-resistant vermilion lip pencil earlier that morning. “When I wear red lipstick onstage, it usually ends up all over me,” says Deschanel, who arrived last night from Seattle, where she is touring the Northwest as one part of the indie folk duo She & Him.
Deschanel, who does her own makeup, is opinionated about color theory (“bronze tones look amazing on green eyes”), and issues practical advice with the confidential air of your childhood best friend: “Do your eye shadow first, then your foundation,” she instructs. “That way, you can clean up any mess without starting all over again.” As for how she gets stage-ready in a pinch: “I always use liquid liner in a Cleopatra wing on the upper and lower lids,” she says. And Rimmel mascara—“It’s so good I don’t need false lashes.”