It took little time for actress-singer Zooey Deschanel – a petite and enigmatic beauty of black hair, pale complexion and deep blue eyes – to gain a devoted audience. Taking up acting as a teenager in the late 1990s and moving into highly-monitored prestige projects such as “Almost Famous” (2000) and “All the Real Girls” (2003), Deschanel’s off-beat projections of character made her cast-worthy before the Christmas comedy, “Elf” (2003), did the trick. Over the next few years, Deschanel found her niche as a reliable supporting presence in both mainstream and independent works of comedy, drama