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Zoe Kravitz: I Was Shut Out of a Dark Knight Rises Audition Because I’m “Urban”

Zoe Kravitz
Zoe Kravitz said she was shut out of an audition for The Dark Knight Rises

Where’s Batman when you need him to save the day? Zoe Kravitz said in a new interview with Nylon magazine that she was unjustly shut out of an audition for The Dark Knight Rises because of her ethnicity.

“In the last Batman movie, they told me that I couldn’t get an audition for a small role they were casting because they weren’t ‘going urban,'” Kravitz, 26, said in the August issue’s cover story. “It was like, ‘What does that have to do with anything?’ I have to play the role like, ‘Yo, what’s up, Batman? What’s going on wit chu?'”

The daughter of rocker Lenny Kravitz and actress Lisa Bonet — both of whom are biracial — the star has been careful about the roles she chooses as she grows her film career. Kravitz’s credits now include parts in the critically acclaimed Dope, Divergent, and Mad Max: Fury Road, and she is weary about getting typecast anytime soon. 

Related: PHOTOS: Zoe Kravitz's Red Carpet Style

“I don’t want to play everyone’s best friend,” she told Nylon. “I don’t want to play the role of a girl struggling in the ghetto. It’s not that that story isn’t important, but I saw patterns and was like, ‘I don’t relate to these people.'”

Kravitz acknowledged her privileged life as the child of two icons in the interview, but stressed that her parents worked to keep her grounded. “We had a chef, but it was never like, ‘This is the way the world works, Zoë,'” she explained. “I knew we were very lucky, and my dad raised me in an old-school way. His mom [actress Roxie Roker] was from the Bahamas, and it was about manners and making the bed. It’s that old black s–t, really — like, you get smacked if you talk the wrong way. It was about having respect for your elders and being thankful for what we had. He wanted to make sure I had chores, and not because we didn’t have a housekeeper, but because of the principle of the thing.”

the dark knight rises

While her charmed life came with advantages, Kravitz also revealed to Nylon that her childhood in the spotlight surrounded by beautiful people also had its adverse effects. 

Related: PHOTOS: Zoe Kravitz at Cannes

She told the mag that she spent her early years as a “chubby, awkward brown girl” who was the daughter of “the most beautiful woman in the world” and constantly “around a bunch of blonde girls.” As a teenager, she battled anorexia and bulimia as she compared herself to those around her.

Her father’s star power as a famed musician also affected Kravitz’s own career plans. 

“There was a point in my teens where I was very self-conscious and didn’t want to make any music because I would get compared to my dad,” Kravitz, who leads the band Lolawolf, told Nylon. “But I knew I was working hard. I’m not a f–king genius, but I know who I am as an artist. The one thing about art is you can’t question it. Everyone is looking at everyone else to find out what’s cool. No one knows what’s cool. Just do it with confidence — no one can take that away from you.”

Related: PHOTOS: Zoe Kravitz at the Met Gala

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