Zooey Deschanel went blonde to play pop star ‘like Britney Spears’ in unmade film before landing “Elf ”role

Key Points

• Zooey Deschanel explained why she went blonde for Elf.

• The actress was cast as “a pop star that was like Britney Spears” before the holiday classic, and her hair was bleached for the role, she revealed on The Zach Sang Show.

• The film was never made, and because of the “long process” to become a brunette again, the blonde stayed for Elf.

We can thank Britney Spears for Zooey Deschanel’s one-and-only journey out of brunette-land.

Known for her thick, raven-dark locks, the 500 Days of Summer and New Girl star shocked fans the one time she went blonde: to play Will Ferrell’s love interest, Jovie, in the 2003 holiday classic Elf.

“I did a screen test for a movie that never ended up going about like a pop star that was like Britney Spears,” the actress revealed on Monday’s episode of The Zach Sang Show. “It didn’t ever happen, but yeah, it was a pop star that was like Britney Spears, who then — it’s like Roman Holiday, where she has a day where she’s not a pop star.”

For her screen test, the film’s producers were “trying to prove — because I didn’t look to them what a pop star looks like — so they were like, ‘We’re going to make you into a pop star.’” Then came a bleaching process so laborious, it ended up sticking around for Elf.

“They dyed my hair blonde, and they put these extensions in, and they gave me a tan and a whole thing,” Deschanel recalled. “I did look as much like a pop star as I can. But then the movie never happened, but then here I was with this blonde hair.”

According to Deschanel, it would have been “hard to just go right back, because it takes a real — my hair is almost black. To go from really dark brown hair to light blonde is a long process… It was right after that screen test that I went in for Elf. Once I got cast, I was like, ‘Well, can I dye my hair back brown?’ And they were like, ‘No, you need to look how you looked in the audition.’”

“So that’s how I ended up blonde in Elf,” Deschanel cheerily concluded. “Not because I was like, ‘I need to be blonde.’ It was really random.”

Deschanel has looked back on the Elf casting process before — even on producers digging their heels in over there being hair-color continuity from screen test to final cut.

The other major role went to Deschanel, a relative newcomer who had turned heads in the 2003 indie drama “All the Real Girls” and had first hit the scene playing Patrick Fugit’s older sister in 2000’s “Almost Famous.” Her performance as Jovie, the department store employee who struggles to get into the Yuletide frame of mind, was her big break. Deschanel and Ferrell have a sweet chemistry on screen, but they almost didn’t get a chance to work with each other. The actress wasn’t the first choice for the role.

Despite almost being cast in a film inspired by the biggest pop star on the planet at the time, Deschanel was still a relative newcomer, having received her best notices for her 2000 turn in Almost Famous.

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“I went in as a backup,” she recalled to Variety in 2018, for the 15th anniversary of the film. “The person they cast couldn’t do it. A lot of the parts I got early in my career, I was filling in for someone else who had dropped out last minute.” Then in 2025, Deschanel revealed that initial casting choice in question was Katie Holmes.

“When I met with Jon Favreau, the director, I walked in, and he was like, ‘Oh, you don’t need to read. We just offered it to Katie Holmes,’” she shared. Holmes ultimately dropped out. As Deschanel told it, “I think the character was kind of meant to be worked around whoever played her, and they knew I sang because I had a cabaret act, so that kind of worked out with the character.”

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