mother, Ivette Buchinger, was the daugh-
ter of Hungarian Holocaust survivors
who settled in Los Angeles by way of
Paris and went into watch distribution.
Lyonne described her mother as a “red-
headed European prima-ballerina hot
chick,” who hoped to become a profes-
sional dancer but never quite found an
on-ramp. As a teen-ager, Ivette met Ly-
onne’s father, Aaron Braunstein, a loud-
talking, ponytailed Brooklyn native, and
they began a high-octane love affair.
“They were both into fast cars, fur coats,
Rottweilers, cocaine, drinking,” Lyonne
said. Ivette moved to New York to be
with Aaron, and they had Lyonne’s older
brother in 1972. They bought a run-
down mansion in Kings Point, Long
Island, that they boasted had once been
the home of Herman Melville. (It had
not.) Ivette worked on and off for her
parents’ business, but around the time
Lyonne was born the company foun-
dered, and the family struggled finan-
cially. “My father was always up to shit,”
Lyonne said. “First he wanted to be a
race-car driver, then a boxing promoter.
So I got put into this business.”
Aaron and Ivette took a gimmicky
approach to stage parenting. When Ly-
onne was five, they legally changed her
last name. She recalled that at parties
they would have her take sips of their
beer and belt out David Lee Roth lyr-
ics “to show off for their friends.” Rid-
ing the Long Island Rail Road to audi-
tions in the city, Ivette would urge her
daughter to read the Wall Street Journal
stock trades aloud. “It was, like, my
street-urchin trick,” Lyonne said. She
landed her first film role at the age of
six, a minor part in Mike Nichols’s 1986
adaptation of Nora Ephron’s novel
“Heartburn,” and, that same year, got a
recurring role on “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.”
She auditioned for but didn’t get the
lead role in “Curly Sue,” though the char-
acter, a frizzy-haired ham who assists
her grifter father figure, may as well have
been written for her. “When I go to
Times Square I get nostalgic, because I
think of myself as a little kid with a brief-
case walking around, developing street
smarts, wondering if my drunk dad is
going to pick me up,” she said.
In social settings, Lyonne trots out
certain anecdotes from her childhood
as if they were bits in a comedic mono-
logue. But in reality her parents’ mar-
riage was volatile, and her upbringing
was distressingly unstable. She recalled
that Aaron would disappear on drink-
ing sprees or lock himself in his bed-
room for days at a time, and that Ivettewould move out of the house after the
couple’s ugliest fights, dragging Lyonne
with her to a Manhattan rental apart-
ment. “It was a lot of basic shit, like
Mommy called the cops on Daddy,” Ly-
onne said, adding, “For me and my
brother, it was very much trying to hold
on.” When she was eight, her father
abruptly announced that the family was
moving to Israel, and that he had grand
plans to bring Mike Tyson to the Hil-
ton Tel Aviv. (Lyonne refers to the move
as her parents’ “tax-evasion scheme,”
because they ended up in debt to the
I.R.S.) Her dad bought a black Porsche
and promoted boxing matches in small
venues around the country. Lyonne re-
called visiting the ancient city of Cae-
sarea, taking a ski trip in Lebanon, and
performing in an Israeli movie involv-
ing a hot-air balloon. In a narrow office
at the back of her apartment, she showed
me a framed photograph of her work-
ing as a “ring girl” at a fight in Tel Aviv,
grinning and waving an Israeli flag. Ly-
onne described that period as the “great
years” of her childhood, but in 1989 Ivette
returned to New York and took Nata-
sha with her. “My dad’s drinking was
no longer magnanimous or the life of
the party,” Lyonne said. “And it’s not
like they were winning at this boxing-
promoting life style. That pipe dream
was dying, and the money was running
out.” (Her brother stayed in Israel, and
as adults the siblings lost touch.)
Back in New York, mother and
daughter bounced from one apartment
to another. Lyonne landed a role in the
film version of “Dennis the Menace,”
but she was auditioning more than she
was landing parts. “I’m no Drew Bar-
rymore, I’m not in fucking ‘E.T.,’” she
said. “And I’m lugging around this
nutjob”—her mother—“and we are a
package deal.” Ivette’s parents helped
support them financially, and at their in-
sistence Lyonne secured a scholarship
to Ramaz, an Orthodox academy on the
Upper East Side, but she was expelled
in her sophomore year for dealing mar-
ijuana to her classmates. In 1995, Ivette
moved to Miami, and Lyonne, who was
fifteen, stayed behind to make “Every-
one Says I Love You,” sleeping on the
couch of a family friend’s studio apart-
ment in Murray Hill. The movie was
packed with stars—Goldie Hawn, Alan
“Leave this house and never return! It’s a seller’s market!” Alda, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts—