Zoe Swicord Kazan (born September 9, 1983 in LA) is an American actress and playwright.

Acting career

Her first professional stage credit was the 2006 off-Broadway revival of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie starring Cynthia Nixon. She followed this with the Playwrights Horizons production of 100 Saints You Should Know and Jonathan Marc Sherman's Things We Want, directed by Ethan Hawke.

In January 2008, Kazan made her Broadway debut opposite S. Epatha Merkerson and Kevin Anderson in a revival of William Inge's Come Back, Little Sheba. Ben Brantley of The New York Times called her performance "first-rate," adding, "Ms. Kazan is terrific in conveying the character’s self-consciousness." In the fall of the same year, she appeared on Broadway as Masha in Anton Chekhov's The Seagull opposite Kristin Scott Thomas and Peter Sarsgaard.

On the small screen, Kazan has appeared in four episodes of HBO's Bored to Death. She also made an appearance on the NBC series Medium.

Kazan was featured in three 2007 films: The Savages, Fracture, and In the Valley of Elah. The following year she appeared in August, Me and Orson Welles and Revolutionary Road.

Zoe Kazan is also a playwright. In 2009, her play Absalom premiered at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, KY. The play, about a father's tense relationships with his children, had been extensively read and workshopped since Kazan's junior year at Yale University. She capped off the year playing Meryl Streep's daughter in the Nancy Meyers comedy It's Complicated. She is appearing in the Broadway production of A Behanding in Spokane with Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell until June 6, 2010. She also played a main role in the movies I Hate Valentine's Day and The Exploding Girl which both came out in 2009.

Starting in fall 2010, Kazan will play Harper Pitt in Signature Theatre Company's 20th Anniversary production of Tony Kushner's Angels in America.