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Natasha Lyonne: ‘I’m having this crazy return as a hot chick in her forties’

From a chaotic childhood to heroin addiction, the award-winning actress’s life hasn’t been easy. Now she’s having a reboot — and it couldn’t be sweeter

Known in her teen years as a doe-eyed indie film star, famous for the cult classics But I’m a Cheerleader and The Slums of Beverly Hills, and the brash comedy American Pie, by her early twenties Lyonne was in the chaos of addiction, followed by rehab and a decade of relative hermithood. Our two chicken salads arrive alongside a huge bowl of calamari — which Lyonne insisted come all at once — with a silver boat of tomato sauce and a bread basket and a platter of butter and the salt and pepper and flower vase and the six glasses on our tiny table. There was a drink-driving arrest, a court appearance after a run-in with her neighbour, hospitalisation for hepatitis C, a collapsed lung and infective endocarditis, having to later undergo open-heart surgery to correct previous damage, and finally, in 2006, at 27, methadone treatment and rehab for drug and alcohol abuse.

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