Natasha Lyonne has been a professional actress since the late ’80s, appearing as a kid on TV shows like Pee-wee’s Playhouse and as a teenager and young adult in movies like Everyone Says I Love You, Slums of Beverly Hills, and the American Pie series. Over the years, Lyonne has become known for playing a number of lesbian and bisexual characters, which has led some people to wonder about her real-life sexual orientation. We can confirm that Natasha Lyonne is not gay. Here’s a look at the actress’s love life.
Natasha Lyonne Is Straight
In addition to tough and sarcastic inmate Nicky Nichols on the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, Lyonne’s gay characters include Megan from the 1999 cult film But I’m a Cheerleader and Jeanne from the 2000 TV movie If These Walls Could Talk 2. But despite having multiple gay roles on her resume, Lyonne says she is not gay in real life—though she admits she’s experimented.
“Mind you, when I say I’m not gay, it doesn’t mean that I’ve never tried sleeping with women,” she clarified in a 2016 interview with the New York Times. “Of course I have. I’m not a dumb-dumb.”
The Russian Doll star added: “I never want to feel like I’m taking ownership of an experience that’s not my own. But it seems like a lot of the female experience is in response to men. And when I play a lesbian character, it means that she’s on her own ride. I love men. I want to sleep with as many as possible. But I don’t want my whole life, and certainly, my creative experience, to be in response to always just being ‘the girl.’ Like, who needs it?”
Natasha Lyonne’s Dating History
Edward Furlong
Natasha Lyonne dated Terminator 2 star Edward Furlong in the late 1990s. She met the fellow actor while they were filming the 1999 movie Detroit Rock City. “I was crazy for him on that movie set,” Lyonne admitted in a 2014 interview for Vanity Fair (which was conducted by her best friend, Chloë Sevigny). “He and I were together for a while.”
Unfortunately, both actors ended up getting deep into the drug scene and the pair broke up in 2001. Today, Lyonne has been sober for more than a decade.
Adam Goldberg
Lyonne dated Saving Private Ryan star Adam Goldberg in the early ’00s. While some reports say they were together for three years, from 2001 until 2004, Lyonne told the Huffpost that they dated for about two years. And while we don’t know the exact reason for their split, actress Judy Greer revealed that Goldberg was devastated by the breakup. “He was f**ked up over you when we shot that movie,” the actress said in a 2015 joint interview with Lyonne for the Huffpost, referring to a film she made with Goldberg in 2003.
Fred Armisen
Lyonne was first linked to comedian Fred Armisen in 2014 after Armisen posted a photo of Lyonne on Instagram with the caption, “The beautiful and brilliant Natasha Lyonne.” Soon after, the pair attended a number of high-profile events together (including the Emmy Awards) and it became clear they were a couple.
According to 2019 cover story on Lyonne in Glamour, Armisen and Lyonne were introduced to each other by actress and SNL alum Maya Rudolph. The duo continued to date for many years and their relationship was well-documented by the press. While it was never officially confirmed, many people suspect that the couple called it quits sometime during the pandemic. They have not appeared together publicly since the 2020 Golden Globe Awards, and The Daily Mail published shots of Lyonne hand-in-hand with a guy who was not Armisen at an event in 2021.
