- Zazie Beetz stars alongside Joaquin Phoenix in Joker, a movie generating major awards show buzz.
- She plays Sophie, Arthur Fleck's (Joaquin Phoenix) understanding neighbor.
- The German-American actress has previously starred in the FX show Atlanta and the superhero movie Deadpool 2.
“I don't know what it's like to be famous!” the actress Zazie Beetz joked in an Instagram caption back in March 2018.
When she made the post, the 29-year-old actress was on the cusp of fame. Deadpool 2, her most prominent movie at the time, was two months away from its premiere. Though Beetz had already received acclaim for her work on the FX show Atlanta, Deadpool 2 was her definitive initiation into the movie star pantheon.Deadpool 2 became the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time—until Joker, a movie Beetz also starred in, came out in October 2019 and beat all previous records.
As her past year’s successes prove, Beetz better get used to being famous, because she is.
Beetz has a natural charisma on screen. In Joker, she plays the troubled Arthur Fleck’s (Joaquin Phoenix) understanding neighbor. It’s easy to believe she would show kindness to a man everyone else overlooks—which is what makes the movie’s later revelations all the more devastating.
And her off-camera persona is just as appealing. On her Instagram, she appears less like a celebrity, distant and glamorous, and more like a down-to-earth woman you can admire and want to befriend all at once.
That said, Beetz resists the idea of being boxed in by the internet’s perception of her. “They see me as a natural chick who, like her hair, is kind of weird and crazy. She likes patchouli and doesn’t wear deodorant. And I don’t mind that, but I didn’t necessarily choose it for myself,” Beetz told her friend and Atlanta collaborator, Donald Glover, in a feature for Interview magazine.
We may not ever really know Beetz–but it sure is easy to like her.
Zazie Beetz's name is easy to pronounce, once you get the hang of it.
With a name as unique as Zazie Beetz, she was bound to be famous. Beetz cleared up her name's pronunciation in an Instagram post. "Zazie" rhymes with "Marie" and "Beetz" is pronounced like "Bates."
On an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live, Beetz revealed her name’s origin story. Her father was inspired by the French movie Zazie dans le metro (1960), a nonlinear film about a 12-year-old girl who wanders around the Paris Metro.
She grew up between Germany and New York.
Thanks to her parents' epic love story, Beetz was raised between cultures. Beetz's father is a cabinet maker from East Germany. After the Berlin Wall came down, he visited the United States and met Beetz’s mom, a social worker. The couple moved to Germany, and in 1991, Beetz was born.
When Beetz was eight years old, her family moved back to New York more permanently. Though she spent most of the year in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, she returned to Germany every year for summer camp. Beetz speaks with her father exclusively in German, and is fluent in the language.
Given this upbringing, she has a strong connection to her German roots. “I may not look particularly German but my German identity is really important to me and is a big part of who I am,” Beetz told The Independent. She's so German that her first paid job was at an H&M in Berlin.
She can navigate the differences between cultures, too. According to Beetz, German people are more genuine than Americans. “If you go to a party, they won’t pretend to like you unless they actually do,” Beetz told Jimmy Kimmel.
Beetz rose to fame on Atlanta.
Until Atlanta’s first season premiered in 2016, Beetz’s credits mostly consisted of low budget (or no budget) projects.
Then came Atlanta, a critically acclaimed comedy created by Donald Glover (whose rapper name is Childish Gambino). Her character, Van, has a child with Earn, Glover’s wandering Princeton drop-out. Their relationship evolves over the course of the show.
She played Domino in Deadpool 2.
Her first major film role was in the disaster movie Geostorm—but her big break came in the form of 2018’s Deadpool 2, a daring, fourth-wall-breaking superhero movie set in the Marvel universe.
Beetz was cast as Domino, a superhero with a very convenient power: She’s the luckiest woman alive. Nothing can touch her. “They kept me very beautiful because [Domino] doesn't get hurt. Nothing happens to her. It's sort of a joke," Beetz told Refinery29.
In 2019, Beetz appeared in Joker, a record-shattering movie that tells a villain's origin story. No longer in action hero mode, Beetz played Sophie Dumond, Arthur Fleck’s (Joaquin Phoenix) neighbor who witnesses his transition from clown to Joker, the iconic villain from the Batman comics.
And she's been busy in Hollywood ever since.
Beetz shines in the Netflix movie High Flying Bird, a Steven Soderbergh movie centered around the behind-the-scenes dealings of a sports agent during basketball season. She’s also in Easy, a Netflix show about interconnected love stories. Though Joker was her most prominent 2019 movie, she also appeared in two movies based on true stories: Seberg and Lucy in the Sky, based on the story of former NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak.
Next up, catch Beetz in Slice, a horror movie co-starring Chance the Rapper.
She’s in a long-term relationship with actor David Rysdahl.
Beetz’s Instagram feed is an absolutely adorable ode to her boyfriend of almost five years, David Rysdahl. "He's so much of me and always catches me. My mood swings up and down and he'll follow me there to say it's okay," Beetz shared on Instagram.
Like his girlfriend, Rysdahl works in entertainment: He’s an actor, writer, and producer. Most recently, he appeared in reenactments in the political Netflix docuseries The Family, about a secretive Evangelical sect that wields influence in world governments. He has a deep connection to the show. In the podcast Don’t @ Me with Justin Simien, Rysdahl revealed he grew up in an Evangelical Christian family.
She brews her own kombucha and body butter.
"Yes, I make my own kombucha, no it's not better than storebought," Beetz shared on Instagram, along with a picture of her homemade recipe.
For anyone who wants to make their own fermented drink, Beetz shared her tips in an interview with Refinery29. “Nice, steady, room temperature, and a dark place. And that's all that it really asks for. You have to sort of wait it out and keep tasting until you have something you like. It's pretty easy,” she said.
Beetz shared her homemade body butter technique on Instagram as well.
She won't change her natural hair.
For Beetz, wearing her hair in an afro is a deliberate choice—and the only choice she'll make. When Beetz's career was first getting started, casting directors told her to change her hair and "keep it more CBS," as Beetz recalled to Vogue, but she resisted.
That changed with Atlanta and Deadpool 2. The projects' creators encouraged her to keep her hair natural. “It’s incredibly freeing to be able to show people that this is a viable way to wear your hair—on-screen and in the world,” Beetz told Vogue.
She graduated from the same high school as Jennifer Aniston.
And many other Hollywood stars. Beetz attended LaGuardia High School, a premiere arts school that was the inspiration for Fame.
In addition to Aniston, Beetz can count Al Pacino, Ellen Barkin, Sarah Paulson, Timothée Chalamet, Ansel Elgort, and Jharrel Jerome of Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us among her fellow alumni.
After graduating from LaGuardia, Beetz went on to study French at Skidmore College. She immediately started auditioning after college and landed the role of Van in Atlanta.
She’s open about her mental health issues.
Beetz struggles with anxiety and panic attacks. But she’s happy to talk about it. Actually, as she told The Cut, “It’s my favorite thing to talk about!”
Before the first season of Atlanta started filming, Beetz experienced a panic attack. She elaborated on the experience in an Instagram post.
"My boyfriend and I got into a fight, and it ended with me sobbing that he didn’t 'understand that I was going to die when I go down there. There is only a black cloud in front of me and I am going to die.' I really believed that. There was nothingness in my future," she wrote. "This was before I began seriously addressing my issues with anxiety."
In the time since, Beetz took steps to change her lifestyle, including eliminating caffeine and alcohol from her diet.
She’s a major cat person.
In fact, she's so devoted to being a cat person that she knit a hat for her cat, Coco. "She's tolerant. That's her general personality," Beetz said on Late Night with Seth Meyers.
Rysdahl and Beetz also love taking Coco for walks.
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Elena Nicolaou
Elena Nicolaou is the former culture editor at Oprah Daily.
