(Credit: Alamy)
Sat 30 August 2025 23:15, UK
Being the child of actor-musician parents exposes you to the world of showbiz from an early age.
For Zoë Kravitz, she was catapulted into the glamorous world of her famous parents, Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet, constantly brushing with stardom, being exposed to some of film and TV’s most historic moments, and fuelling her own desire to become an actor, and eventually, a film director.
Kravitz is also surrounded by actors through her extended family, something that has inspired her love of film and desire to share this with the world. Her 2024 appearance on the Criterion Closet’s Closet Picks with then-partner Channing Tatum, while on the press tour for her directorial debut, Blink Twice, cemented the actor as a true cinephile with great taste in film, sharing her love of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands, and films like Paris is Burning and Moonstruck.
But there was one movie character that the actor, now 36, was “obsessed” with as a kid, which was Jodie Foster as Tallulah in the 1976 film, Bugsy Malone. The iconic film was a childhood favourite of Kravitz’s, and sees children – including Jodie Foster, who was 13 at the time, and Scott Baio (See Dad Run) – play fully grown adults in a whimsical, musical universe.
The creative concept was the brainchild of director Alan Parker, who explores 1920s New York during Prohibition through the lives of Fat Sam, the owner of a speakeasy and his conflict with rival Dandy Dan’s men, getting into perilous adventures with Bugsy Malone, a boxing promoter. The film cleverly held up a mirror to adults, showing the absurdity of their behaviour when lensed from a child’s perspective, with children’s voices dubbed by adult actors, and guns shooting whipped cream.
Jodie Foster plays a showgirl and gun moll for Fat Sam, as well as being Bugsy’s old flame. Foster exuded charisma in the film, deftly proving her confidence as an actor. By that time, Jodie Foster had already starred in seven films, making her name as a child actor before her role in Taxi Driver the same year propelled her to stardom.
For Kravitz it was the scene where Foster sings, ‘My Name is Tallulah’ in the speakeasy – in which Foster’s voice was actually dubbed by an adult female singer – that Kravitz fell in love with, admitting that she used to put her mum’s boas on and walk around singing ‘My Name is Tallulah’ in an attempt to emulate Foster’s captivating performance.
Foster also has fond memories of the film, but admits it was not a hit in America, despite being a much-loved film in the UK – the director Alan Parker was British, as were all the child actors, but the film found funding in the US, helped by being a musical about mobsters, so it was filmed there. Foster recalls in one interview arriving on set to a group of dancers from Manchester, who froze her out on set, with Foster joking that the experience was like being in high school and having childhood trauma.
Jodie Foster and Zoë Kravitz went on to star in a 2007 film together called The Brave One, a thriller starring Foster as a revengeful widow, and Kravitz is currently on the press tour for her latest film, Caught Stealing, which stars Austin Butler as a New York bartender in a gangster action comedy alongside Matt Smith and Bad Bunny.
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