What you need to know
Kat Dennings reveals her unconventional childhood bedroom and how she decorated it.
Dennings, 39, spoke with Danielle Fishel on the Wednesday, Jan. 28 episode of the Teen Beat podcast and said that as a child, she lived in the attic of her family’s home in rural Pennsylvania. The attic of the house, a historic building built in 1695, she claimed was “haunted”.
“There was the classic thing where lights go on and off, doors open and close. … I saw it. There were also ice-cold spots on the stairs,” the Shifting Gears actress said.
“Of course I lived in the attic,” she added, admitting it was “very creepy.”
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Dennings added that when she was a young actress, she would travel to New York for auditions and always stop at the newsstand before returning home to pick up art for her bedroom wall.
“Every time I went to New York for an audition, I’d go to the Hudson News and pick up Teen Beat (or) Tiger Beat, and most of them had you in them,” Dennings recalled, nodding to Fishel, who frequently appeared in the magazine as Topanga on Boy Meets World.
“I ripped out Jonathan Taylor Thomas, I ripped out the Hansons, and I papered the room with these things,” she said.
The actress added that she had a cutout of Hanson’s “Stand Up,” or band, that she also kept in her attic bedroom, and that she acquired it at the now-defunct retailer Sam Goody after seeing it on display.
“They gave it to me. I think they took pity on me, or they were scared, which I can understand,” Dennings joked. “So I made this scary haunted house my own. Let’s just say that.”
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Dennings began acting professionally around 2000 after appearing in Sex and the City when she was 14 years old.
In January 2025, Dennings spoke to PEOPLE about her experience in the industry as a teenager, saying she dealt with nasty comments about her appearance.
“When I auditioned and started acting, it was a completely different environment than it is now,” she said at the time. “There was no inclusivity at all. It was very harsh. There was a lot of very negative feedback and people didn’t hold back.”
She added that casting directors can be “very cruel,” adding, “For example, when I was 12 years old, I’d go to an audition and I’d pass the audition and my manager would call me and be like, ‘How was it?'” And they’ll say, ‘Well, they probably thought you weren’t pretty enough and you were fat.'”
But Dennings said the comment “didn’t break my spirit.”
“I was like, ‘I’ll show you,'” she said. “I think it can’t be helped because for my parents, it was like, ‘They’re idiots, don’t listen to them.'” And I was like, ‘They’re idiots, I’m not.’ ”
