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Natasha Lyonne
Natasha Bianca Lyonne Braunstein (/liˈoʊn/ lee-OHN; born April 4, 1979) is an American actress, director, comedian, producer, writer, and tech executive. Lyonne started her career as a child actress before expanding her career taking on mature roles in film and television, for which she was nominated for five Primetime Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards, and 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 to 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 the American Pie film series (1999–2012).
She found a career resurgence and Emmy Award-nominations for her performances as Nicky Nichols in the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black (2013–2019), co-created, wrote, directed, and executive produced the Netflix series Russian Doll (2019–2022), and starred in the Peacock series Poker Face (since 2023) and the Netflix film His Three Daughters (2024).
In 2025, she publicly revealed herself as the co-founder of the artificial intelligence film studio Asteria, founded with her boyfriend Bryn Mooser in 2022 with the intent to create animated feature films with AI tools using responsibly sourced data.
Lyonne was born in New York City, the daughter of Orthodox Jewish parents Ivette Buchinger and Aaron Braunstein, a boxing promoter, race car driver, and radio host. Her mother was born in Paris, to Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor parents.
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 (Hebrew: אחד באפריל), 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".
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".
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Natasha Lyonne
Natasha Bianca Lyonne Braunstein (/liˈoʊn/ lee-OHN; born April 4, 1979) is an American actress, director, comedian, producer, writer, and tech executive. Lyonne started her career as a child actress before expanding her career taking on mature roles in film and television, for which she was nominated for five Primetime Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards, and 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 to 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 the American Pie film series (1999–2012).
She found a career resurgence and Emmy Award-nominations for her performances as Nicky Nichols in the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black (2013–2019), co-created, wrote, directed, and executive produced the Netflix series Russian Doll (2019–2022), and starred in the Peacock series Poker Face (since 2023) and the Netflix film His Three Daughters (2024).
In 2025, she publicly revealed herself as the co-founder of the artificial intelligence film studio Asteria, founded with her boyfriend Bryn Mooser in 2022 with the intent to create animated feature films with AI tools using responsibly sourced data.
Lyonne was born in New York City, the daughter of Orthodox Jewish parents Ivette Buchinger and Aaron Braunstein, a boxing promoter, race car driver, and radio host. Her mother was born in Paris, to Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor parents.
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 (Hebrew: אחד באפריל), 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".
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".
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