Zoë Kravitz is the most important "big little star" of her generation

It's hard to remember a time when Zoë Kravitz was not effortlessy cool. Of course, if your parents are two of the coolest people of their generation, you only have two choices: you can choose to deny their influence, or you can learn from them in order to become much cooler.

Her latest series High Fidelity (from the novel by Nick Hornby) has landed on Hulu on Valentine's Day. Furthermore, next year she's going to be Catwoman next to Robert Pattinson in the upcoming The Batman. Zoë Kravitz is the daughter of singer Lenny Kravitz (who clearly doesn't need any introduction) and Lisa Bonet (The Cosby Show) and today she has become everything she's ever wanted to be: she's an excellent actress both in independent and commercial cinema, a fashion icon (she has 55 tattoos on her body) and a muse for some of the most important maisons of the world. But she's also a singer, leading a rockband (LOLAWOLF) and an influencer (with more than 5 million followers on Instagram). She is, by the very definition of it, an icon.

As a star, even her private life is not so private. After a brief liaison with Gossip Girl and You's actor Penn Badgley, last June she secretly married Karl Glusman (a young and promising actor who have starred in some of the most important films of the past years, as Love by Gaspar Noé, The Neon Demon by Nicolas Winding-Refn and Nocturnal Animals by Tom Ford). The ceremony took place at Lenny Kravitz' house in Paris and it's been one of the biggest events of last season, with guests as her father and mother, Jason Momoa (her stepfather), all the cast of Big Little Lies, Cara Delevigne and Ashley Benson. Despite the secrecy, the web has gone mad for the cocktail dress with which she's been spotted outside the restaurant where she went to dinner.

Big Little Star

You can blame it on her never-aging face, but - even if it may seem crazy - Zoë Kravitz is already 31. She's always lived under the spotlight (her first picture was taken in 1989, when she was just one year old). Today, her father and her mother's new family get along well (so well that Lenny Kravitz hangs out with Jason Momoa and Zoë Kravitz herself has tattooed the names of her two stepsisters), but after her parents' divorce her life has not been easy.

She grow up with her mother in the middle of nothing, on the mountains of Topanga Canyon (in California), and since she was a child she's always had a creative attitude. At the age of 11, she decided to move in to Miami with her father, who meanwhile had become one of the greatest rock stars of the world. Among all that glamour, concerts with the Spice Girls ("I don't remember if it was Scary or Victoria - says Lenny Kravitz, - but she was sitting on one of their laps, and she was in heaven") and paparazzis outside of her school, it was the beginning of a long time of struggling for Zoë, such an eating disorder with whom she struggled for more than 10 years.

“My mother was so pretty that I've always felt goofy when I was around her as a child. My father, on his side, was always surrounded by beautiful models... I was short, and as every teenager I wasn't feeling comfortable under my skin." Plus, it wasn't easy to live in a school where she was the only white girl in the room. "School's been hard. My fellow schoolmates where rich white boys - I felt alienated. I was trying to figure out who I was, and I had not references around me. That's why I felt like a monster."

Fortunately, in the past few years the showbiz has done huge steps in the representation of the black culture and its protagonists. Just think of characters like Tessa Thompson's Valkyrie in the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Halle Bailey who's playing Ariel in the upcoming Disney's live action of The Little Mermaid, or even Halle Berry's Catwoman. Kravitz is a huge protagonist of this new path: her interpretation of Bonnie in Big Little Lies (next to Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Shailene Woodley and Laura Dern) has been one of the smartest representations of a black character surrounded by "toxic whiteness".

I really thought I was going to do theater and indie films. That was what I liked growing up.

[…] I didn’t see a lot of people who looked like me in big movies.

Her first cinematographic break-through has been a small part in No Reservations (2007), next to Catherine Zeta-Jones. But the real success came with X-Men: First Class (2011): it was just the first of many blockbusters she took part to, from the Divergent saga to Harry Potter's spin-off Fantastic Beasts. In the meantime, she's always managed to never leave independent cinema: one of the films she's more proud of is Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) by George Miller, with Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy.

As an old-fashioned diva, Zoë Kravitz is not just a great actress, but also a style icon. She's been a muse and a face of Saint Laurent since 2016, with which she has collaborated to release a collection of 6 lipsticks. She's also always been extremely extravagant with her outfits, whether they were streetstyle looks or red carpet fits. Too gipsy and punk at the same time, some of her looks have already made history, as the Tiffany top she wore to the Vanity Fair After Party of 2019's Oscars or the black Saint Laurent dress she choose on the same year for the MET Gala.

The Greatest Star

Zoë Kravitz's new project is a come back to her indie spirit. Since Valentine's day, February 14, is currently streaming on Hulu her last series: High Fidelity, a 10 episodes rom-com inspired by the homonymous book by Nick Hornby (1995). It's the tragic story of a man who looks at his life, starting from the "5 most miserable failures of all time" (it means: five never-lasted relationships). The book was a huge critic to toxic masculinity. Ironically, a film transposition of the book (with Jon Cusack) was already made for the big screen by Stephen Frears and it starred her mother Lisa.

Zoë, who's worked on the project as an executive producer as well, has always had her mind straight about her intentions: she moved the location to Brooklyn (she's lived for 10 years in Williamsburg) and she's turned the protagonist Rob into Robin, a gender-fluid-millennial female character with a vintage leather jacket and a Dickies t-shirt.

It was a choice of matter. Plus, her Robin will not just be a woman, but a woman of color. "I was trying to recreate a world that I know” Kravitz says, “and that’s what it looks like. […] If that show was in Iowa or something, fine, but you’re living in Brooklyn. There’s people of color everywhere. It’s unavoidable. Same thing with Woody Allen — like, how do you not have black people in your movies? It’s impossible. They’re everywhere. We’re everywhere. I’m sorry, but we’re everywhere.”

Beyond High Fidelity, in the future Zoë will take place in another reboot: she's been casted to play Catwoman in the upcoming The Batman, next to The Dark Night who will be played by Robert Pattinson. It will not be the first time that Kravitz will play Catwoman: she already gave her voice to the animated version of the character in The Lego Batman Movie. Not bad, for a girl that was suggested to surrender to the idea that she had no choices of getting a part in Christopher Nolan's saga. “It wasn’t like we were talking to the top of the top in terms of who was casting the thing, but they said they weren’t ‘going urban.’ I thought that was really funny.”

High Fidelity is streaming on Hulu since February 14.