Natasha Lyonne Returns With Mike Leigh Play
Sunday January 6, 2008
She was my favorite rising star: Natasha Lyonne, with that throaty voice, curly hair and big eyes. As the knowing teenage narrator in Woody Allen's musical Everyone Says I Love You (1996), she stole the film with a cast that included Allen, Julia Roberts, Ed Norton, Goldie Hawn, and Drew Barrymore.Lyonne followed that film up two indie classics: Tamra Jenkin's hilarious The Slums of Beverly Hills (1998) and Jamie Babbit's lesbian comedy But I'm A Cheerleader (1999). She achieved mainstream stardom with her standout performance in the raunchy teen comedy American Pie.
And then. Lyonne was pulled over for drunk driving in Miami Beach, telling the police officer: "But I'm a movie star!" Michael Rapaport evicted her from his Manhattan apartment and dished about her in Jane magazine. The tabloids reported widely on her drug addiction. Lyonne was hospitalized for five months in 2005.
So it's with genuine pleasure that I report that Natasha Lyonne has resurfaced. She has completed roles in four feature films. She's also starring in Mike Leigh's Two Thousand Years, which will begin previews at New York's Acorn Theater on January 15. It will mark Lyonne's theater debut.
"My life is very much in the present today," she told the New York Times. "And that's what theater is all about." [posted by Marcy]
Comments
Love to hear about young stars and other professionals who make comebacks after
suffering social opprobrium in the USA.
Since we’ve been a puritanical, irrationally moral society I’d certainly like to see that we might be becoming somewhat more grown up, maybe a little less double-standarded as a society.
Agreed. The media machine is so extraordinarily tough on young stars these days.