Zoe Kravitz Tried To Drop Her Famous Last Name: I Used To Be Insecure About People Associating Me w/ My Family

Zoe Kravitz

Zoe Kravitz Tried To Drop Her Famous Last Name: I Used To Be Insecure About People Associating Me w/ My Family

There was a point in Zoe Kravitz’s life that she didn’t want to be defined by her father’s legacy.

Before the actress, who’s also the daughter of iconic singer Lenny Kravitz and actress Lisa Bonet, started booking major roles and becoming a household name, she wanted to drop Kravitz from her name, so that she could separate her success from her father’s.

Zoe Kravitz, Lenny Kravitz, Lisa Bonet

The now 31-year-old actress revealed during an interview with Dax Shepard on her Armchair Expert podcast, that she tried changing her professional name to “Zoe Isabella.”

When asked: “Did you embrace your name or did you run from it?”, she confessed,

“I thought about not using it.  kind of tried to do it, but it just like didn’t stick. People kept on forgetting. No one was responding to this idea I had. I would tell my agent and it just wasn’t happening.”

She says that Lenny wasn’t too pleased with with idea when she brought it up to him:

“I also think I mentioned it to my dad at one point and I think I could feel that it made him a little sad. So, yeah, I just kind of stuck with it, I did used to be really insecure about people just associating me with my family and now I love it—I’m so proud of them and it’s cool.”

Zoe Kravitz, Lisa Bonet, Lenny Kravitz

Her comments come nearly a year after she admitted that she didn’t know if her last name is what helped her land auditions. She said in June 2019,

“When I got into acting school, I never knew if it was because of my audition or my last name. But I’m slowly learning that no director will hire me because of my surname. The first 10 years of my career have been about proving myself. I now finally feel like I’m in a place where I’m able to say, ‘I deserve this,’ and, “I worked really hard.’ I’m getting better.”

Do you think Zoe should have tried to continue to change her name to Zoe Isabella?