Zoey Deutch

Zoey Deutch is the daughter of the director Howard Deutch and the actress and director Lea Thompson, and she started where a lot of industry children start: Disney Channel, then a CW series, then a young adult adaptation. Vampire Academy in 2014 was supposed to launch a franchise and did not.

What she turned out to have is comic timing of a specific and slightly unfashionable kind: fast, verbal, unafraid of being irritating. Madison in Zombieland: Double Tap is a broad idiot performed with real precision, all breath and no pauses, and she is the funniest thing in the film. Harper in Set It Up is the same instrument tuned for warmth, and that film did more for the streaming romantic comedy than most of what came after it.

The more interesting stretch is the run of films where she plays women who are difficult on purpose: the debt collector in Buffaloed, the teenager in Flower, the aspiring influencer in Not Okay. All three ask an audience to spend a whole film with somebody selfish, and Deutch never begs forgiveness on their behalf. She produces as well as acts. Lately she has moved upmarket, playing Jean Seberg in Nouvelle Vague and taking supporting roles in The Outfit and Juror #2, and Everybody Wants Some!! is still the proof that she can hold a scene by doing almost nothing in it.