Zoë Kravitz, American Woman

Zoë Kravitz grew up a flower child in the canyons of L.A. with her actress mom and a wild child in Miami and beyond with her rock-star dad. But she’s making her own way to the top.

Sunday afternoon in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and the neighborhood is being its Williamsburgiest self. Outside a gentrified coffee shop under the grimy elevated J-M-Z tracks, a jaywalking Hasidic man darts into the street, making a dude with dreadlocks in an SUV pump his brakes. Inside the cafe, three white twenty-somethings are brainstorming about starting the hashtag #stopkillingpeople when a woman in line overhears them and says she loves it. “Oh, thanks!” one says. “We’re trying to figure out ways to promote our music video!”

“Noooooooo,” says Zoë Kravitz when told of this exchange a few minutes later. “Were they serious?” She hangs her head. “Aw, man.”

Kravitz, 29, has lived in Williamsburg for 10 years, and she enjoys the same pastime as many of its residents: complaining about how much cooler it used to be. “There’s a fuckin’ Apple Store,” she says. “Which used to be my bagel spot!” A few years ago, she fled the neighborhood’s increasingly moneyed epicenter (“I didn’t want to live in an ugly new condo around a bunch of investment bankers”) for its relatively grittier southern parts. “It’s totally different down here,” she says. “These people aren’t going anywhere.”

Kravitz orders a latte with an extra shot and says she woke up “mere moments ago.” (It’s 1:06 p.m.) She just got back from London, and now her internal clock is all screwed up. Yesterday she slept until 4 p.m., rolling out of bed to catch Mean Girls on Broadway with her new pal and Big Little Lies co-star Reese Witherspoon. Afterward, they grabbed dinner, then Kravitz stayed up until 5 a.m. binge-watching Friends on Netflix. “I love Friends so deeply,” she says. “Obviously it’s a bummer when you look back and everyone is white. But it’s like chicken soup.” Sometimes she’ll watch so many in a row that Netflix interrupts to ask if she’s still there. “And then a single tear rolls down my cheek,” she says, laughing, “and I click ‘continue.’ ”