CRUSHWORTHY: Fall in Love with Zooey Deschanel

When did Zooey Deschanel become so desirable? The 29-year-old has been in the business for the last 10 years. Her critical debut was in 2000's Almost Famous. At the beginning of her career, she faltered a bit with the teen movie The New Guy, but restored her street cred with the indie All the Real Girls and the Will Ferrell Christmas classic Elf. Never failing to sign up for oddball projects, like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Syfy's "Tin Man," or stealing the spotlight from the female lead, like in Failure to Launch, she has the habit of popping up in the most unlikeliest of places, from The Bridge to Terabithia to The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. And that's where it began: the mass worship of a blue-eyed, pale-faced brunette with a sing-songy voice.

Ever since the debut of her music career, and the mass acceptance of her album She & Him's Volume One, she's been scoring more and more lead roles. While she may have faltered with The Happening, she managed to charm the pants off of Jim Carrey in Yes Man.


In 2008's Gigantic, she played a whimsical girl who invades a mattress salesman's (Paul Dano) life with her unorthodox romantic advances. And in 2009's 500 Days of Summer, she played a hopeless unromantic who refuses to believe in true love but manages to cause a sweet greeting card writer (Joseph Gordon Levitt) to fall so deeply in love with her that he goes through every stage of grief once she breaks his heart. While her next project, 2010's Your Highness, may be a return to supporting character roles alongside Danny McBride, James Franco, and Natalie Portman, she'll surely remind people of her effervescent allure, when her second album, dubbed Volume 2, hits iTunes next year.