Watch this video for Kat Dennings' transformation that is seriously turning heads!
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00:00Kat Dennings has had a long journey to fame and success. In just a couple of short decades,
00:05she starred in sitcoms, indie flicks, and major blockbusters. Keep watching to discover
00:10how she went from a kid growing up in Pennsylvania to a big deal crushing it in Hollywood.
00:15Kat Dennings grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia as the youngest of five children. Her poet
00:19mother and scientist father decided to homeschool her, and she finished high school at the age
00:23of 14. She and her siblings weren't allowed to watch TV while growing up. Instead, they
00:28were raised on old Hollywood musicals. One of her favorites was the 1935 Fred Astaire
00:32Ginger Rogers musical, Top Hat. Adding to the uniqueness of her childhood, her family
00:36home was apparently pretty spooky. As she told The A.V. Club in 2018,
00:40"...I grew up in a house that was built in 1694, and it was haunted as f—. It sounds
00:44so crazy, but I swear. You could ask my father, who was 89, who saw some s—."
00:49Nowadays, Dennings is known for her glamorous, old Hollywood look, but she had a slightly
00:52different style as a kid. During a 2014 appearance on Conan, she confessed that she went through
00:57a serious goth phase when she was young.
00:59"...I was kind of obsessed with the Addams Family, and I went through a phase where I
01:03thought I was Wednesday Addams, and I would introduce myself as Wednesday to strangers."
01:08Dennings also slept with her arms crossed over her chest, and her parents were totally
01:11unphased by her behavior. It helps to be the youngest of five.
01:16Dennings got into the acting game from a young age, logging her first performances when she
01:19was only 9 years old. As she revealed to Backstage in 2013,
01:23"...If I had had my way, I would have been acting much sooner than that. I was that kid
01:27who just wouldn't stop hounding her parents to let her try acting."
01:29"...I'm glad I didn't end up in some sort of child institution, because they found me
01:33doing a lot of weird stuff."
01:35Dennings never really trained in acting. Instead, she took just one acting class and hated it.
01:39As she recalled with Great Gusto to Backstage,
01:41"...We had to do the thing where you, like, get on the floor and you have to be like a
01:45tree. And I was like, what does this have to do with film and cinema?"
01:48Dennings estimated that she started out by shooting one commercial a month, and then
01:51at the age of 13, she got her first big role on an episode of Sex and the City as a sassy
01:55teenager who faces off against Samantha. Soon afterwards, she landed a part on a pilot
02:00that was filmed in Los Angeles. She and her mom moved there so that she could shoot the
02:03pilot and continue to pursue her acting career, and then she ended up staying in the city.
02:09After Dennings grew out of her goth phase and stopped wanting to emulate Wednesday Adams,
02:13she began to develop a more grown-up sense of fashion. As she revealed to InStyle in
02:172019,
02:18"...She used to visit thrift stores with her mother, and it was on these trips that she
02:20discovered a look that would carry her into adulthood. Basically, she realized that her
02:24body type wasn't suited to modern fashions. As she recalled,
02:27"'It wasn't for me, but whenever I went to a vintage store and tried on dresses from
02:31the 1940s and 1950s, everything fit perfectly, just because a curvier shape was more like
02:36of the time.'"
02:37For Dennings, these trips to the thrift stores proved instrumental, so she decided to commit
02:41to sporting vintage looks. As she put it to InStyle,
02:43"...I figured out in that moment, fine, I belong in this style. It feels like I am included
02:47in this."
02:49Dennings was only 14 when she landed her first regular TV gig in 2001, on the WB sitcom
02:55The show starred Bob Saget as a widowed father, trying to keep it together while raising two
02:58daughters, who were played by Dennings and future Captain Marvel Brie Larson. For Dennings,
03:03it was her first taste of life as a professional actor. As she recalled to The Hollywood Reporter
03:07in 2019,
03:08"...We still lived in Pennsylvania, so they flew me out with my mom and we did the pilot
03:12and then we went home."
03:13The show, which ran for one season, was also special because it introduced Dennings to
03:16one of her best friends, Rodine Jones, who played a background part. As Dennings gushed,
03:21"...She's still my best friend to this day. She had blue cornrows that were like down
03:24to her ass, and I was like, who's that? Hello? We're friends."
03:29After years of playing various guest roles on TV, Dennings eventually broke out on the
03:32big screen. In 2004, she played the part of Sloane in the Hilary Duff starring Razor Voice.
03:38But her true breakout happened the following year, when she starred alongside Steve Carell
03:41in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. As she recalled to The Hollywood Reporter in 2019,
03:45"...I went to a few auditions for renowned casting director Alison Jones. She does all
03:49those movies that are amazing. And I somehow got that role, and I just loved it. It was
03:53such an interesting process. It was such a cool film to be in. It was everybody's first,
03:58like, big thing, and it was just amazing to be a part of it."
04:01Dennings certainly made an impression on her co-stars. As her on-screen mother Catherine
04:05Keener declared in The New York Times, Dennings was already a natural, even though she was
04:09still just a teenager.
04:11It wasn't long after The 40-Year-Old Virgin that Kat Dennings would have even more to
04:14offer moviegoers. When she and Michael Cera played the title characters in 2008's Nick
04:18and Nora's Infinite Playlist, it proved to be quite a career-defining role for her. The
04:22film wasn't a huge hit at the box office, but she nevertheless earned some wonderful
04:26reviews. And over the years, her performance has stood the test of time.
04:30As Decider wrote in 2018, Dennings imbued Nora, a role that could have very easily waded
04:34into stock character territory, with an achingly poetic depth and explosive comedic bite. At
04:39the time, Dennings felt like she'd really hit the jackpot. As she told The Hollywood
04:42Reporter in 2019,
04:44She also noted,
05:05After Nick and Nora, Dennings continued working steadily in movies, most notably as Darcey
05:09Lewis in 2011's Thor. But her next big lead role brought her back to a regular small screen
05:14gig, as she played Max the Diner Waitress on Two Broke Girls. The CBS sitcom premiered
05:18in the fall of 2011 and ran for six seasons until 2017, and it had a significant connection
05:23to Dennings' first-ever TV role.
05:25Two Broke Girls co-creator Michael Patrick King had previously worked on Sex and the
05:29City, which Dennings had guest-starred on back in 2000. In 2011, he raved to GQ,
05:34I don't think there's anybody else like her. So he basically hunted her down for this.
05:38She has a kind of amazing outsider edge. It made everything else fall into place."
05:42The show ended up being a massive hit, but after six years playing the same character,
05:46Dennings was ready for a new challenge. In 2019, she told the Los Angeles Times,
05:50By the end, I just wanted to burn that waitress uniform. Not that there's anything wrong with
05:54the show. I'm very proud of it.
05:56In 2014, Dennings had a bit of a high-profile romance when she started dating musician Josh
06:01The couple actually met through Beth Behrs, Dennings' Two Broke Girls co-star. However,
06:06Groban had already caught Dennings' eye through his online activity. As she noted on The Ellen
06:09DeGeneres Show,
06:10He's very witty on the Twitter, and I saw his little tweet sometimes."
06:13Behrs and Groban have been friends for a while, and she thought that he and Dennings would
06:16get along since they're both nerds. The relationship started out pretty well. As Dennings recounted
06:21during an interview on Late Night with Seth Meyers, they enjoyed a week in New York going
06:25to plays, sleeping in, playing video games, and eating good food.
06:28We know what normal people think.
06:29Yeah, that's all really good.
06:30It was great. And then he's in Denmark now, about to sing for the queen, and I'm with
06:34you.
06:35Wow.
06:36Yeah.
06:37Point Groban.
06:38But ultimately, the Dennings-Groban romance wasn't meant to last forever, as they split
06:42up in 2016. A source told E! News that the breakup was a mutual decision. Perhaps it
06:46was for the best. As Dennings told the Los Angeles Times in 2019,
06:50I've been through this thing where you're so in love that you forget yourself.
06:54When Kat Dennings took on her next big TV role, it was definitely a far cry from Max
06:58Beginning in 2019, she starred on the Hulu sitcom Dollface as the lead character Jules,
07:03a heartbroken woman who tries to reconnect with old friends after getting dumped.
07:06I have no clue if I still have a job or an income, but I'm glad I have you guys to figure
07:12it out.
07:13This wasn't just a new acting opportunity for Dennings. It was also a chance to take
07:16on a more hands-on role behind the camera, as it was her first experience as a producer,
07:21and it did not disappoint. As she explained to Shun Magazine,
07:24I was ready for a more involved role in the next job I took on, before I even read the
07:28script."
07:29While acting remained her number one passion, she was looking for a way to provide more
07:32input into a project as a whole. And Dollface, which was produced by Margot Robbie's company,
07:36Lucky Chap Entertainment, seemed like the perfect opportunity. As Dennings explained,
07:40Margot and her company were very involved and collaborative, and they felt very heard.
07:44And based on how things went for her this time around, we'll probably see a lot more
07:48producing credits for Dennings in the future. As she gushed,
07:50I love producing, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat."
07:54Dennings is a vegetarian, though that wasn't always the case. While growing up, she ate
07:58just about everything. But this all changed in 2020, after she saw the David Attenborough
08:02documentary A Life on Our Planet. Dennings then took to Instagram and declared in a since-deleted
08:06video,
08:07I will never be the same. David Attenborough's film is a handbook for how the human race
08:11can come together to stop destroying our round blue home. I'm definitely going plant-based
08:15starting tomorrow. Except for butter, but other than that."
08:18In another since-deleted post from 2020, Dennings went into more detail about her new diet,
08:22as she revealed,
08:23Fun fact about your Uncle Kat, I am not a vegan. I am, however, very excited to make
08:27more plant-based choices in my life. But please don't hold me to any standard. I'm just a
08:32girl, looking at oat milk, asking it to love her. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to sprinkle
08:35ground-up fish onto my vegetable garden."
08:37In 2011, Dennings made her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in Thor as Darcy Lewis, interned
08:43to Natalie Portman's Jane Foster. It was originally meant to just be a fairly small
08:47part, but then that started changing. As Dennings explained to WhoWhatWear in 2021,
08:52The role gradually got a bit bigger, and a bit bigger, and I was like, do they realize
08:56what they are doing?
08:57When Marvel came calling again a decade later for Darcy to reappear in the 2021 TV show
09:02WandaVision, Dennings was shocked all over again. The offer to come back on board all
09:06these years later was an expected one, but the chance to reprise the part was ultimately
09:10thrilling for Dennings.
09:11As she confessed to Looper,
09:12I will say that I was surprised by what they do with Darcy. It's very exciting. It was
09:16exciting for me. I mean, anyone who's a fan of Darcy will be very happy.
09:20Part of me secretly wanted a guest spot on this show, but seriously, that sucked."
09:25We sure hope that Darcy continues to pop up in the MCU, and we bet we're not the only
09:29ones who feel that way.