Age, Biography, and Wiki
Natasha Lyonne was born as Natasha Bianca Lyonne Braunstein in Manhattan, New York. She began her career as a child actress, making her debut with roles in Heartburn (1986) and Pee-wee's Playhouse (1986). Her distinctive raspy voice and tough persona have become iconic in the industry.
| Occupation | Voice Actress |
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| Date of Birth | 4 April 1979 |
| Age | 46 Years |
| Birth Place | New York City, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Aries |
| Country | U.S |
Height, Weight & Measurements
While specific measurements for Natasha Lyonne are not widely reported, she is known for her slender build and distinctive appearance. Her height is approximately 5 feet and 3 inches (160 cm).
| Height | 160 cm |
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Dating & Relationship Status
Natasha Lyonne has kept her personal life relatively private. She does not publicly disclose her current relationship status, focusing instead on her career and family life.
Lyonne has joked that her family consists of "my father's side, Flatbush, and my mother's side, Auschwitz". Her grandmother, Ella, came from a large family, but only she and her two sisters and two brothers survived, which Lyonne has attributed to their blond hair and blue eyes. Lyonne's grandfather, Morris Buchinger, operated a watch company in Los Angeles. During the war, he hid in Budapest as a non-Jew working in a leather factory. Lyonne lived the first eight years of her life in Great Neck, New York. She and her family emigrated to Israel, where she spent a year and a half. While in Israel, Lyonne participated in the 1989 Israeli children's film April Fool, which began her interest in acting. Her parents divorced, and Lyonne and her older brother, Adam, returned to the United States with their mother. After moving back to New York City, Lyonne attended the Ramaz School, a private Jewish school, where she was a scholarship student who took Talmud classes and read Aramaic. She was expelled in her sophomore year for selling marijuana to classmates. Lyonne grew up on the Upper East Side, where she felt she was an outsider. Her mother moved the family to Miami and Lyonne briefly attended Miami Country Day School. She did not graduate from high school, leaving before her senior year to attend a film program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, which she attended for a short time, studying film and philosophy. Her high school graduation depended on completing her first year at Tisch, but she left the program because she could not pay the tuition.
Lyonne was estranged from her father, who was a Democratic candidate for New York City Council for the sixth District of Manhattan in 2013, and lived on the Upper West Side until his death in October 2014. She has said she was not close to her mother, who died in 2013, and has essentially lived independently of her family since age 16.
As a young child, Lyonne was signed by the Ford Modeling Agency. She was cast as recurring character Opal on Pee-wee's Playhouse at age seven, where she appeared between September and December 1986, and made her film debut that same year with a small part in the Mike Nichols comedy-drama Heartburn. Of her time working as a child actor, Lyonne later said, "I had to become coherent and a businesswoman at six. By 10, I was a jaded professional ... I don't think [my parents] knew better. It was a decision of [theirs] built on hopeful ignorance".
Lyonne dated Edward Furlong in the late 1990s and Andrew Zipern in the early 2010s. She began dating comedian and actor Fred Armisen in 2014, but confirmed in April 2022 that the relationship had ended. The two remain close friends.
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Net Worth and Salary
Estimates of Natasha Lyonne's net worth vary significantly. Some sources suggest it is around $3 million to $5 million, while others estimate a higher range of $10 million to $15 million, likely due to her extensive work in acting, producing, and directing. Her salary from individual projects, such as her role in American Reunion, has been reported to be around $500,000.
Career, Business, and Investments
Natasha Lyonne's career spans over three decades, with appearances in more than 100 film and television projects. She has been part of notable films like American Pie (1999), But I'm a Cheerleader (1999), and Scary Movie 2 (2001). Her roles in Orange Is the New Black (2013-2019) and Russian Doll (2019-2022) have been particularly acclaimed, earning her multiple Emmy nominations. She is also the co-creator, writer, director, and executive producer of Russian Doll. Lyonne has recently starred in the Peacock series Poker Face (2023-present).
Natasha Bianca Lyonne Braunstein (born April 4, 1979) is an American actress, writer, comedian, director, and producer. Lyonne started her career as a teen actress before expanding her career taking on mature roles in film and television. She is known for her distinctive raspy voice and "tough" persona. She has been nominated for five Primetime Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards. She was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2023.
Lyonne started her career as a child actress making her first uncredited appearance in Heartburn (1986), a recurring role in Pee-wee's Playhouse (1986), and a supporting role in Dennis the Menace (1993). She transitioned taking on teen roles in several independent films such as Everyone Says I Love You (1996), Slums of Beverly Hills (1998), But I'm a Cheerleader (1999), and Party Monster (2003) as well as in broad comedic films such as American Pie (1999), American Pie 2 (2001), Scary Movie 2 (2001), and American Reunion (2012).
She found a career resurgence and Emmy Award-nominations for her performances as Nicky Nichols on the Netflix comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black (2013–2019), a software engineer stuck in a time loop in the 2019-2022 Netflix comedy-drama series Russian Doll (also serving as co-creator, writer, director, and executive producer), and a woman who can tell when people are lying in the Peacock crime comedy series Poker Face (2023–present). She also starred in the Netflix drama film His Three Daughters (2024).
Lyonne made her New York stage debut in the 2008 production of Mike Leigh's Two Thousand Years at the Acorn Theatre. She was part of the original cast (October 2009–March 2010) of Love, Loss, and What I Wore, an off-Broadway play by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron, based on the book by Ilene Beckerman. In 2010, Lyonne received positive notices for her performance in Kim Rosenstock's comedy Tigers Be Still at the Roundabout Theatre Company, with Charles Isherwood commenting in his review for The New York Times: "Ms. Lyonne [is] 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". Lyonne starred in the 2011 production of Tommy Nohilly's Blood from a Stone at the Acorn Theatre. The following year, she participated in a benefit performance of Women Behind Bars.
Lyonne portrayed American actress Tallulah Bankhead in Lee Daniels' The United States vs. Billie Holiday, a biographical drama based on the life and career of jazz singer Billie Holiday, in 2021. She made a cameo appearance as herself in the Rian Johnson-directed mystery thriller Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery the following year, and hosted the season 47 finale of Saturday Night Live, where she performed a five-minute monologue about her career and personal troubles. In January 2023, she starred as Charlie Cale—a casino worker with an innate ability to detect lies—on the Peacock series Poker Face. Inspired by television murder mysteries such as Columbo, the series was positively reviewed, with Nick Hilton of The Independent calling it "satisfyingly pacy and pulpy", while saying of Lyonne, "[she's] a bundle of unhinged charisma". The show will return for a second season in 2025.
Lyonne co-founded the production company Animal Pictures with Maya Rudolph. Its first greenlit project was the sketch comedy special Sarah Cooper: Everything's Fine (2020), which Lyonne directed. The company also produces Russian Doll, Poker Face, Loot, and the animated series The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy. It was announced in October 2023 that Rudolph had parted ways with the company, leaving Lyonne to operate by herself under the Animal banner. In May 2024, she signed a deal with production company Sister, who will collaborate with Lyonne on upcoming Animal projects.
Social Network
Natasha Lyonne maintains a relatively low-key presence on social media, focusing on her work and personal life. While she does not have an official public presence on platforms like Instagram or Twitter, her fans and colleagues often share updates about her projects.
After playing a supporting role as Polly in Dennis the Menace (1993), Lyonne was cast at age 16 in the Woody Allen-directed musical comedy Everyone Says I Love You (1996), where she co-starred as D.J., the daughter of main character Joe (played by Allen). This led to a headline role in the independent coming-of-age comedy Slums of Beverly Hills (1998), for which she received positive notices for her portrayal of Vivian Abromowitz. Writing for The Washington Post, Michael O'Sullivan said, "Lyonne is marvelous in conveying Vivian's combination of confusion, curiosity, disgust and desire at what body and psyche are going through. After playing a string of people's daughters [in other films], Lyonne really comes into her own here as an actress, registering as a person and not merely someone's little girl".
Lyonne had a supporting role in Abel Ferrara's post-apocalyptic drama 4:44 Last Day on Earth (2011), which Movieline called "weirdly compelling". Two years later, she began appearing on the Netflix comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black; her first television job as a series regular. Critics were effusive about her portrayal of prison inmate Nicky Nichols, for which she received a nomination for the 2014 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series, and was twice awarded—alongside her co-stars—the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Ensemble in a Comedy Series (2015; 2017).
Lyonne's work as hard-partying Lou in Antibirth (2016), a psychedelic horror feature inspired by the films of David Cronenberg, drew special attention; Alex McLevy wrote in a review for The A.V. Club, "The actor has experienced a remarkable resurgence in the past few years ... Here, she channels her storied past to play Lou... drug-addled... plays to Lyonne's strengths—a bluntly outsized personality, brash but likable, with a self-destructive streak bigger than the podunk town in which the story unfolds". Other film credits of hers include Sleeping with Other People, Hello, My Name Is Doris, Addicted to Fresno, Hashtag Horror (all 2015); Yoga Hosers, The Intervention (both 2016); Handsome (2017), Show Dogs (2018), Honey Boy (2019), and James Gray's science fiction thriller Ad Astra (2019).
"After battles with addiction and other health scares [in] the early-2000s, [Lyonne] has managed to revive her career ... a personal narrative arc that clearly informs Nadia's constant brushes with her own mortality ... Lyonne is such an idiosyncratic screen presence — not to mention so distinctly New York/Jewish/aggro — that most of the roles she's played, particularly as an adult, have barely bothered to delve beneath the surface of that persona ... Nadia, on the other hand, is unmistakably Lyonne ... It goes deeper and wider than anything she's gotten to play [since] her teenage days in indie films like Slums of Beverly Hills and But I'm a Cheerleader."
Lyonne identifies as straight, but has also said of her sexuality, "I look at sex more as... 'hmm, what's this mischief I can get into?' I'm in this third category. My sexuality and gender is more like... merry prankster".
Education
Details about Natasha Lyonne's formal education are limited. She began her career in entertainment at a young age, which likely influenced her educational path. Her early start in modeling and acting shaped her professional trajectory from an early age.
Overall, Natasha Lyonne's career is marked by her versatility and dedication to both acting and behind-the-scenes work. Her impact on the entertainment industry continues to grow with each new project she takes on.
Lyonne played the part of Jeanne, a college activist fighting for lesbian equality, in the acclaimed 2000 television film If These Walls Could Talk 2. She then appeared in the well-received Holocaust drama The Grey Zone (2001), and continued to work steadily through the early 2000s, in mainstream projects such as Scary Movie 2, Kate & Leopold (both 2001) and Blade: Trinity (2004), as well as smaller productions such as Zig Zag (2002), Die, Mommie, Die!, Party Monster (both 2003), Madhouse (2004), and My Suicidal Sweetheart (2005). Next, she headlined the 2009 experimental dark comedy The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle, which was described as "relentlessly strange, courageous, and hyperactive" by The Austin Chronicle. Her portrayal of Debbie Tennis, a psychotic serial killer, in the 2010 horror parody All About Evil was particularly well received, with Film Threat commenting, "[its director] rightfully treats Lyonne as the superstar she is, giving us glimpses of the dark residing in [her] that made Freeway 2: Confessions of a Trick Baby [sic] the final cult masterpiece of the 20th century", noting that "her ability to unleash firehoses of ferocity is on full display here".
