Natasha Lyonne

Natasha Lyonne
Lyonne at the 2014 Peabody awards
Born	Natasha Bianca Lyonne Braunstein (1979-04-04) April 4, 1979 (age 37) New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1986–present

Natasha Bianca Lyonne Braunstein (born April 4, 1979), better known as Natasha Lyonne, is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Jessica in the American Pie series and her appearances in the films Everyone Says I Love You, Slums of Beverly Hills, But I'm a Cheerleader, and Blade: Trinity. She currently portrays Nicky Nichols in the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, for which she received a nomination for the 2014 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.

Lyonne was born in New York City, the daughter of Ivette Buchinger and Aaron Braunstein, a boxing promoter, race car driver, and radio host, who was distantly related to cartoonist Al Jaffee.

Lyonne's parents were both from Orthodox Jewish families, and she herself was raised Orthodox. Her mother was born in Paris, France, to Hungarian Jewish parents who were Holocaust survivors. Lyonne sometimes darkly jokes 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 credits to their blonde 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.