Showbiz Today Star of Tomorrow

Natasha Lyonne

At 21, Natashia Lyonne has starred in almost a dozen films and doesn't believe the atypical teenagers she plays are atypical at all

July 17, 2000
Web posted at: 11:43 a.m. EDT (1543 GMT)

(CNN) -- Dysfunction and teen-age awkwardness have propelled the career of Natasha Lyonne. The 21-year-old actress has appeared in about a dozen movies, mostly as characters dealing with coming-of-age issues.

There's her role as the daughter of Woody Allen's character in "Everyone Says I Love You" (1996); the part of the well-endowed Vivian in "Slums of Beverly Hills" (1998); and her latest release "But I'm a Cheerleader," in which she plays a lesbian shipped to a boot camp to reform homosexuals.

Offbeat characters are nothing unusual to Lyonne.

"I think that atypical is almost the norm," she says. "Maybe that's how I end up playing those parts, because I don't even see them as atypical to begin with."

Being abnormal even has its perks, Lyonne says, reflecting on her days in the "Slums of Beverly Hills."

"Oh man, those were the days," she says. "When I had those giant breasts, life was great. I had the biggest boobs in America. Of course, they were prosthetics."

She has to settle for large pompoms 0n "Cheerleader." Although designed to be a comedy, the movie has deeper meaning, Lyonne says.

"It deals with things in a real way, a funny way," she says. "But generally what the underlying absurdity of it is ... that this is real. People really do send people -- or go themselves -- to homosexual rehab in the hopes of becoming straight. That is insane."

CNN Showbiz Today Correspondent Lori Blackman contributed to this report.

Review: 'But I'm a Cheerleader'
August 23, 1998
Review: 'American Pie'
July 9, 1999
Review: 'Slums of Beverly Hills'
August 23, 1998

Internet Movie Database: Natasha Lyonne

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