KAT DENNINGS: Living All of Her TV Dreams

GROWING UP A ‘RARE KIND OF CHILD,’ THE STAR OF 2 BROKE GIRLS AND THE NEW SITCOM SHIFTING GEARS DREAMED OF BEING AN ACTRESS. HOW SHE FOUND SUCCESS—AND PROVED THE NAYSAYERS WRONG

- ESTHER KANG

Kat Dennings came out of the womb with stars in her eyes. She didn’t begin acting professionally until she started appearing in commercials at the ripe old age of 9, but she had already long mapped out a future in front of the camera with ferocious intensity. “I think I was a rare kind of child, that I dreamed of being an actress. That was all I thought about,” says the 38-year-old 2 Broke Girls alum, whose latest TV series—her fourth—is the new ABC sitcom Shifting Gears, costarring Home Improvement’s Tim Allen. “My brother told me the other day, ‘You really had goals. I’ve never met another kid who had goals like you before.’ It’s like I popped out knowing what I wanted to do and really wanting to go for it.”

Her parents, Gerald and Ellen Litwack, were skeptical—after all, Hollywood can be tough on kids. But knowing how passionate their daughter was about acting, they allowed her to pursue her dream on a month-by-month basis, thinking she would eventually lose interest and move on. “But I really loved it. I loved going to New York for auditions. I loved playing pretend,” the Pennsylvania native recalls. “It was really fun for me, and it stayed fun for me—for the most part.”

When she began auditioning nearly 30 years ago, the landscape was a “very different environment than it is now,” she recalls. At the time there wasn’t much inclusivity, and she says she would often receive “extremely negative feedback” that was too “cruel” for an impressionable child. She was just 12 years old when her manager reluctantly informed her that the casting directors in her last audition thought “you weren’t pretty enough, and you’re fat.”