That's usually how I get to know strangers - get inappropriately touchy. Once they've experienced the awkwardness of you being way too close for comfort, after that, it all gets easy.
Natasha LyonneI have a lot of friends who are trying to clean up their act, or that are still making trouble for themselves, so Iโm definitely well-versed on what goes on in the mind and the heart of a person who self-destructs as their coping mechanism, and also what theyโre like when you take their preferred substance away.
Natasha LyonneI adore Eddie Kaye Thomas and Jason Biggs. Eddie was the only one who called me when they were doing 'American Reunion' and told me, 'You need to do this.'
Natasha LyonneAs a woman, I've learned that having a uniform of your staples or setting your look and saying what distinguishes you - like red lips or hair or whatever - leaves so much time for the rest of the day.
Natasha LyonneAnormal day looks like, you know, shower, put on the same jeans, the same tattered Gucci loafers I got at the thrift store, white socks, and my t-shirt and my very beat-up Helmut Lang blazer. Im in the exact same outfit every day.
Natasha LyonneThere's a great Albert Camus quote: 'The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.' When I first re-emerged, I was embarrassed to walk down the street. People would come up and say, 'I heard you were dead!' But I had to remind myself that a lot of the stuff I went through was pretty brutal. I'm definitely thankful that some of the rough patches are behind me.
Natasha LyonneOver time, you realize that even the things that are most high stakes kind of resolve themselves.
Natasha LyonneThere's that special magical place that exists when you forget everything else because you are laughing hysterically. It's the only truly safe place and it can happen with a stranger or a best friend.
Natasha LyonneI'm somebody who believes in funny things, and laughing, but I do like for them to come from a place that addresses the human condition.
Natasha LyonneWhat I like to do is to give my real name in Starbucks but be really hostile each time, as if they're asking me something that I've never heard in my life. I give them a really dirty look, "Really? It's Natasha. Okay?" Like I've never been to Starbucks before. Each time. I enter the premises looking for combat.
Natasha LyonneThere are beauty icons that I can never be like, sorta like a Gena Rowlands - I'll never have that look. I love Giulietta Masina, the great Fellini actress. But I'm probably more Seymour Cassel. Or somewhere between Lou Reed and Nora Ephron?
Natasha LyonneThe thing about curly hair is that it's a toss-up. Some days you can let it air dry and it's better than a hair-do, but some days you just look like a sloppy person. I'm really resistant to a trim. I only do it when it gets hard to brush out in the shower, then I'll submit, begrudgingly.
Natasha LyonneMy family moved to Israel when I was eight until I was 10, and then we came back, and my parents split up. I was suddenly in a single-parent home and on scholarship. Fifth grade was such a hard year for me.
Natasha LyonneRemember when we didn't live in the future? When we were young, it was not the future yet.
Natasha LyonneUltimately, I think people are so hopeful for having some joy in life that is really hard to find. You can't make a living, and the idea of doing one small bank robbery or something, just trying to find your way in a life, finding your footing and ending up behind bars.
Natasha LyonneThere's something great about all your worst fears coming true and being said about you. There's a tremendous liberation on some level.
Natasha LyonneI was this kid who had been raised in New York, and now all of a sudden, my mother decided that she was a Jewish divorcee and therefore she should be living in Miami Beach.
Natasha LyonneI'm really enjoying growing up. I feel like so much of my life was in an existential crisis when I was young, and I don't feel as bogged down by that anymore.
Natasha LyonneRather than spend so much time wondering if I'm going to get hired, or is it a problem that I've got this black-tar history, I've just got to keep doing what I'm doing and try to be decent.
Natasha LyonneThe person sending ironic text messages has no idea that their voice does not sound so great in text. There's no dry sense of humor in a text. It comes off as a little bit shitty.
Natasha LyonneLife is a wildly transient thing with people coming into your life and dropping away. It definitely takes work to maintain relationships.
Natasha LyonneIn my experience of living, for a time, in the underbelly of society, I spent a lot of time in various holding cells.
Natasha LyonneIf I was a bajillionaire, I would spend a lot of time at Barneys just buying all kinds of great things all the time. I would have so many black cashmeres it would be out of control. I like the way nice things feel very much.
Natasha LyonneYou compare yourself to somebody who you think is a peer, and you can totally lose the plot, and not understand that you are nothing like them in the first place, and it was never you versus anybody.
Natasha LyonneI would have done well as a gypsy child, I think. A circus baby. I coulda played a great street urchin or ragamuffin. Or just been one. I certainly liked entertaining people and making jokes, but I don't know necessarily if that's what your child is prone to that you should necessarily put them in a real working industry at six years old.
Natasha LyonneI will take the subway and look at certain women and think 'God, that woman's story will never be told. How come that lady doesn't get a movie about her?'
Natasha LyonneI learned that if you're going to be a troublemaker, you don't want a ton of witnesses, because there's inevitable fallout from living like you're in 'Lord of the Flies.'
Natasha LyonneI'd love to go to school, but every time I try I get a movie. That's actually how I get work: I enroll. That's like my good luck charm.
Natasha LyonneI have a deep compassion for the idea that it's okay to be myself. The idea that anything 'other' is bad and wrong and broken is so wildly off base.
Natasha LyonneI grew up in Manhattan, and I've always had all kinds of people around me. I've always had a very 'live and let live' point of view.
Natasha LyonneAs wild as I was, when the cops show up, and suddenly you're being handcuffed, it's so deeply shocking and terrifying, the loss of freedom.
Natasha LyonneMy car is always black. I really struggle with red cars. I don't want to attract too much cop attention.
Natasha LyonneI have a television, but it's not connected to anything. I watch everything on my computer.
Natasha LyonneIt's a wild thing, that people have the ability to help each other by just relating to one another.
Natasha LyonneThe aging process is totally minimizing. Life in general is pretty minimizing because you have a lot of big ideas, and you have to battle the mistaken delusions and instability that come with youth.
Natasha LyonneYour trade becomes very much impacted by the quality of your life experiences and your capacity to process them.
Natasha LyonneI often think my boyfriend is going to leave me just from seeing how I talk to the dog. But you know, when you are talking to your dog, you are accessing this softer side of you. Everything else melts away.
Natasha LyonneAs a rule people don't think other people on drugs are funny. They think they are tragic. They have a point, but I still had the funny.
Natasha LyonneWhen I was a young person working, everybody was older than me, so I had to kind of keep up. I'd see every movie and listen to everything played, and read all the relevant books. Being an actor, it's kind of your job to know what came before you and how big your feelings are allowed to be.
Natasha Lyonne