Kat Dennings was born on June 13, 1986, to a Jewish family in the Bryn Mawr/Wynnewood area near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she was also raised. Dennings was home schooled, and when she first told her parents about her wanting to pursue an acting career, they thought it “the worst idea ever” (Kat Dennings to Interview magazine in 2007). Even so, her entire family picked up and left for Los Angeles, California around 2002 so she could act full time.
Dennings first notable role came in 2000 when she was cast on the HBO cable television series Sex and the City, in the episode “Hot Cold in the City”, playing a 13-year-old girl who hires Samantha to handle publicity for her bat mitzvah. Then came the short-lived TV series Raising Dad (2001-2002), where she played Bob Saget’s daughter. After this came numerous cameos in television shows like Without a Trace, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CSI: NY, and a recurring role in the twelfth season of ER, where she played Zoe Butler. She scored minor roles in both Hillary Duff’s Raise Your Voice, where she played Sloane, and in the independent drama Down In The Valley, where she starred alongside Edward Norton and Evan Rachel Wood.
Her biggest role didn’t come until she was cast as Catherine Keener’s daughter in The 40 Year-Old Virgin, which went on to win the BFCA award for “Best Comedy”. She also played the rebellious daughter in Big Momma’s House 2, which grossed a total of $70 million at the U.S. box office.
Her first starring role in a cinematic film came when she was cast in Charlie Bartlett, the story of a wealthy teenager, played by Anton Yelchin, who acts as psychiatrist for his new public high school after getting kicked out of his old one for selling fake I.D.s. Dennings played Barlett’s love interest Susan Gardner, who is also the daughter of the school’s principal, played by Robert Downey, Jr.. Charlie Bartlett was first scheduled to be released the fall of 2007, but was pushed back until it finally opened in theatres on February 22, 2008.
Dennings’ next film was The House Bunny, where she appeared alongside Katharine McPhee, Rumer Willis, Anna Faris and Emma Stone, playing the pierced, misfit sorority girl, Mona.
However, her biggest starring role as of date is undeniably playing Norah Silverberg, the daughter of a famous record producer, in the Sony Pictures’ film Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, a teen romance based on a novel of the same name by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. She starred alongside Michael Cera, Alexis Dziena and Ari Graynor, and the cast and crew spent 29 consecutive days during the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike shooting the film. The film was released on October 3, 2008.
In 2009, Dennings appeared in Arlen Faber, a story about a celebrity author whose manifestos have become a sort of new Bible. The same year, she also co-starred in Shorts, directed by Robert Rodriguez.
Future projects of Dennings includes Defendor, a superhero film starring Woody Harrelson and Sandra Oh. It will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival September 2009. She is also slated to appear in the romantic comedy Liars (A-E), a film about a woman on the way to the inauguration of Barack Obama, directed by Richard Linklater and written by Emma Forrest. Dennings also hopes to make End Zone, a film based on the novel of the same name by Don DeLillo, but the project has yet to be greenlit because of its controversial subject matter, nuclear war.
In her free time, Dennings keeps up weblog which has been online since January 2001, as well as video blogging on YouTube, to the delight of all her fans. She has proclaimed herself a lover of baby animals, Shojo manga, and cheese. She is an avid reader, friends with author Andrea Seigel, and a huge Steve Martin fan. In 2005, she dated the brother of Evan Rachel Wood, Ira David Wood IV, whom she brought to the world premiere of The 40 Year-Old Virgin. In 2007, dated Criminal Minds star Matthew Gray Gubler, but stated in an interview in January 2009 that she was currently not seeing anyone.
Based on Kat’s Wikipedia article.
– back