Zoe Trope

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It may come as a surprise that Kazan would have to prove anything to anyone in Hollywood, given her pedigree. But her parents rarely took her to sets, and she wasn't aware there was a public dimension to her name until her middle-school drama teacher asked if she was related to Elia Kazan. She answered that her grandfather, director of On the Waterfront and A Streetcar Named Desire, was in fact Elia Papou--Greek for grandpa. Only then did her parents show her one of his movies (Viva Zapata!). She says she'd love to play Stella in Streetcar but only if it doesn't involve constant conversations about the difference between Elia Kazan and Elia Papou. The family connection "is much bigger in other people's imagination than it is in my life," she says.

Ruby Sparks (in limited release July 25) should establish Kazan in her own right. In a late, pivotal scene, she becomes a whirling dervish of crazed physicality and heartbreaking emotion--it's ferocious acting. After the seventh take, in the middle of the night, Dayton recalls, "Val turned to me and said, 'We have our movie.'" Later, when told that Dano was a little envious because the scene looked like so much fun to play, Kazan shakes her head slightly but definitively. "It wasn't fun," she says. "It was hard."

Kazan and Dano met during rehearsals for the 2007 play Things We Want, in which they portrayed lovers. Their chemistry was immediate and intense, even though Kazan had wanted to avoid a "showmance." As we glide along in our Swan Boat, I ask if they plan to get married, and Kazan laughs. "You and everybody else wonders that," she says. "We're still so young."