Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan welcomed their daughter Alma in 2018 and a son in 2022
Credit: Emma McIntyre/WireImage
NEED TO KNOW
- Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan have been together since 2007 and share two children, born in 2018 and 2022
- The couple spent seven months in New Zealand in 2025 while Kazan worked on Netflix’s East of Eden adaptation
- Dano reflects on balancing acting careers and parenthood, saying it has helped him grow in his 40s
Paul Dano is sharing how he and Zoe Kazan manage their manage their acting careers while parenting two children.
Dano, 41, and Kazan, 42, have been in a relationship since 2007, when they met performing in the Ethan Hawke-directed Off-Broadway play Things We Want. In the nearly two decades since, both have seen their careers flourish and welcomed two children: daughter Alma Bay, born in August 2018, and a son, born in October 2022.
"It's a really tough question because we figure it out every week, month, season, year," Dano tells PEOPLE during a recent interview for his new movie The Wizard of the Kremlin, in theaters now. "The two working parent thing can be really challenging, but I think we're also really blessed that we get to do work that we care about. So it's important that we somehow make it work for each other and for our family."
Dano says he, Kazan and their children spent seven months in New Zealand in 2025 while Kazan worked on the upcoming Netflix series East of Eden. Florence Pugh stars in the adaptation of John Steinbeck's 1952 novel of the same name. Kazan adapted the story for Netflix and serves as an executive producer on the series.
The family's experience in New Zealand "turned out to be amazing," Dano tells PEOPLE. "The school for our daughter was incredible and we made some wonderful little friends in that community, but we're also very happy to be home in Brooklyn. I guess we just take each wave as it comes."
Credit: Monica Schipper/WireImage
Kazan has not acted on screen since 2022, when she played New York Times journalist Jodi Kantor in She Said. In 2024, she returned to Broadway for the first time since 2010 in a production of Doubt. Dano, meanwhile, has continued working steadily on both the big and small screens.
Over the past two years, Dano appeared in the 2024 miniseries Mr. & Mrs. Smith, starred in Netflix’s Spaceman, made appearances on shows like The Studio and Fantasmas, and co-starred with Jude Law, Alicia Vikander, and Jeffrey Wright in The Wizard of the Kremlin. In the film, he plays a fictional Russian figure who rises to become one of Vladimir Putin’s chief political advisers in the 1990s and 2000s.
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Credit: Courtesy of Vertical
Amid a busy work schedule and family life, Dano turns 42 on June 19.
"Probably the first thing I think of is actually not age that changed me, but probably parenthood is the first thing — where becoming a parent has forced me to grow up in a much different way," he tells PEOPLE of moving through his 40s. "So I think more than turning 40 or or 41 or 42, it's sort of learning through my kids and how to meet them at the ages that they're at and what they ask of you."
The Wizard of the Kremlin is in theaters now.
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