Natasha Lyonne

At 45 years old, Natasha Lyonne has this physical status:

Natasha Bianca Braunstein (born April 4, 1979), also known as Natasha Lyonne, is an American actress, writer, producer, and director.

She is best known for her role as Jessica in the Netflix film series (1999–2012), as well as her portrayal of Nicky Nichols in the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black (2013–2019), for which she received an Emmy Award nomination in 2014 and her appearance in the American Pie film series (1999–2012).

She is also a co-creator, executive producer, and writer for Netflix's 2019 movie Russian Doll, in which she plays Nadia Vulvokov's lead role. Lyonne has appeared in more than 50 films, including People Says I Love You (1996), Slums of Beverly Hills (1998), But I'm a Cheerleader (both 1999), Scary Movie 2, Kate & Leopold (both 2001), The Officials. Both 2003 and 2005 Blade: Trinity (2004), Robs (2005), Sleeping with Others (2005), The Intrigue (all 2015), and Show Dogs (2018).

Early life

Lyonne was born in New York City, daughter of Ivette Buchinger and Aaron Braunstein, a boxing promoter, race car pilot, and radio host distantly related to cartoonist Al Jaffee. Lyonne's parents came from Orthodox Jewish families, and she was raised Orthodox. Her mother was born in Paris, France, to Hungarian-Jewish parents who were Holocaust survivors. Lyonne has sarcastically stated that her family consists of "my father's side, Flatbush, and my mother's side, Auschwitz." Ella's grandmother came from a large family. Lyonne says she and her two siblings and two brothers survived, which Lyonne attributes in their blond hair and blue eyes. Morris Buchinger, Lyonne's grandfather, owned a Los Angeles watch company. He hid in Budapest as a non-Jew working in a leather factory during the war. Lyonne lived in Great Neck, New York, for the first eight years of her life.

Lyonne and her parents immigrated to Israel, where she and her father lived for a year and a half. Lyonne developed an interest in acting during her stay in Israel with her family. Lyonne and her older brother Adam returned to America with their mother after she was divorced. Lyonne attended the Ramaz School, a private Jewish academy, where Lyonne said she was a scholarship student who took honors Talmud classes and read Aramaic. She was banned from selling marijuana at school. Lyonne grew up on the Upper East Side, where she felt she was an outcast. Lyonne attended Miami Country Day School, where she and her mother moved their family to Miami. She hasn't graduated from high school; she left early in her senior year to attend a film class at the Tisch School of the Arts in New York City. Her high school graduation was dependant on the success of her first year at Tisch, but she had to leave the program because she couldn't pay the tuition.

She studied film and philosophy at New York University for a short time.

Lyonne was estranged from her father, who was a Democratic nominee for the sixth District of Manhattan in 2013, and lived on the Upper West Side until his death in October 2014. Lyonne has said she is not near her mother and has effectively lived independently of her family since age 16.

Personal life

Lyonne used her earnings from her appearance on Everybody Says I Love You to buy a tiny apartment in Gramercy Park when she was 18. Lyonne had legal trouble and was jailed for driving under the influence of alcohol in the early 2000s, as well as incidents involving her neighbors. Following complaints by other tenants about her behavior, her landlord, actor Michael Rapaport, evicted her in 2005.

Lyonne was admitted (under a pseudonym) to Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan in 2005, suffering from hepatitis C, a heart disease, and a ruptured lung; she was also receiving methadone therapy for heroin use. After she skipped a court hearing related to her prior legal problems, a warrant was issued for her arrest in January 2006. An emergency had arisen, but she did not give further information. Lyonne was admitted to a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center later that year, and she appeared in court afterward. A judge has sentenced her to conditional discharge.

Lyonne underwent open-heart surgery in 2012 to restore heart valve damage caused by her endocarditis heart disease, which may have resulted in sudden death if untreated. On The Rosie Show in March 2012, she recovered from the surgery and addressed her previous health issues.

Lyonne is a resident of East Village, a borough in New York City. Fred Armisen, a sarcastic on Saturday Night Live, started dating in 2014; Lyonne and her beau announced that their union had broken down in April 2022.

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Career

As a young child, Lyonne was signed by the Ford Modeling Agency. At the age of six, she was cast as Opal on Pee-wee's Playhouse, followed by film appearances in Heartburn, A Man Called Sarge, and Dennis the Menace. On working as a very young child actor, Lyonne said: "I didn't have the best parents. I don't think they are bad people. Even if they were ready to have children, it is kind of a wacky idea to put your child in business at six years old." Natasha recently starred in an audiobook titled "Space: 1969" where she voiced the main character Nurse Nancy.

At age 16, Lyonne was cast in the Woody Allen-directed Everyone Says I Love You (1996). This led to appearances in a variety of films over the next 10 years, including starring roles in the independent features Slums of Beverly Hills (1998), for which she received two Teen Choice Award nominations, and But I'm a Cheerleader (1999). During this time, she appeared as Jessica in the highly successful teen comedy American Pie (1999), reprising the role in two of its sequels. Lyonne's other films during this period included Detroit Rock City, Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby (both 1999), Scary Movie 2, The Grey Zone, Kate & Leopold (all 2001), Party Monster (2003), and Blade: Trinity (2004).

Lyonne's subsequent film appearances include All About Evil (2010), 4:44 Last Day on Earth (2011), Girl Most Likely, Loitering with Intent, Sleeping with Other People, Hello, My Name Is Doris, Addicted to Fresno, #Horror, Yoga Hosers, Antibirth, The Intervention, and Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie.

In 2019, she appeared in Shia LaBeouf's autobiographical film Honey Boy.

Lyonne made her New York stage debut in the award-winning New Group production of Mike Leigh's Two Thousand Years.

She was part of the original cast of the award-winning Love, Loss, and What I Wore, a play by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron, based on the book by Ilene Beckerman.

In 2010 Lyonne received positive reviews for her performance in Kim Rosenstock's comedy Tigers Be Still at the Roundabout Theatre Company: "a thorough delight in the flat-out funniest role, the grief-crazed Grace, so deeply immersed in self-pity that she has cast aside any attempts at decorum".

In 2011, Lyonne starred opposite Ethan Hawke and Ann Dowd in New Group's production of Tommy Nohilly's Blood From a Stone. The following year, she participated in New Group's benefit performance of Women Behind Bars.

On working in the theater, Lyonne said, "There's something about theater that squashes the self-critical voices because you have to be in the moment. I'm glad that I didn't do this before I was ready before I was capable of showing up every day. That is not a skill set I had before".

Lyonne has made guest appearances on the series Grounded for Life, Weeds, New Girl, Will & Grace, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

From 2013 to 2019 she appeared as Nicky Nichols in the critically acclaimed Netflix series Orange Is the New Black. The role is Lyonne's first television job as a series regular. She received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2014, and has twice been awarded the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series, along with her co-stars.

In 2014 Lyonne was cast in Amy Poehler's NBC comedy pilot Old Soul, directed by David Wain. In 2016 she began voicing the character Smoky Quartz on the Cartoon Network show Steven Universe. She has also appeared as various characters on IFC's sketch comedy series Portlandia. In 2018 she voiced the character Gaz Digzy on Adult Swim's comedy series Ballmastrz: 9009. She has voiced characters on The Simpsons and Netflix's Big Mouth.

Her performance in the 2019 Netflix series Russian Doll has been praised as "astonishing". Alan Sepinwall of Rolling Stone called it "brilliant". The series as a whole received 13 Emmy nominations including Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for Lyonne's performance as Nadia Vulvokov, and Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series.

In 2017, Lyonne was approached by Kenzo's creative directors Carol Lim and Humberto Leon to direct the 5th installment in their short film series. For this, her directorial debut, she began writing a script with Maya Rudolph in mind to star. The surrealist short film was titled Cabiria, Charity, Charlotte and starred Rudolph, Fred Armisen, Greta Lee, Leslie Odom Jr. and Macaulay Culkin.

In September 2017, Lyonne's project Russian Doll was given an eight-episode straight-to-series order by Netflix. The comedy, co-created and executive produced by Lyonne, Amy Poehler, and Leslye Headland, premiered on February 1, 2019. Lyonne has multiple roles in the series. She is credited as the lead actress and is one of the series's executive producers with directorial and writing credits.

In 2018, Lyonne co-founded the production company Animal Pictures with Maya Rudolph. The first project Animal Pictures green-lit was Sarah Cooper: Everything's Fine, which Lyonne directed.

Lyonne directed an episode of Orange Is the New Black for its seventh and final season, as well as an episode of Hulu's Shrill, "WAHAM." and an episode of High Fidelity titled "Weird...But Warm."

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