Charlyne Yi Biography

Charlyne Amanda Yi was born January 4, 1986 and is an American actress, comedian, musician, writer, and painter. Her performances do not always include joke-telling as in standup comedy; instead, she uses different tactics such as music, magic, games, and often audience participation. Her screenwriting debut, the feature film Paper Heart, won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.

Yi was born in Los Angeles, California; her mother is of Filipino-Spanish descent and her father is of Korean, Irish, German, French and Native American ancestry. She attended the University of California, Riverside before leaving to pursue full-time stand up comedy. Yi began by performing in Fontana, California. She has since performed shows in Los Angeles at The Steve Allen Theater, and The Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. In 2005 and 2006 she performed in the New York Comedy Festival, and in 2007 HBO's U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado. Yi's film debut was on June 1, 2007 in Judd Apatow's 2007 film, Knocked Up. In 2008, Yi performed as part of the Apatow for Destruction Live comedy show at Montreal's Just For Laughs Festival. The role of Leslie Winkle in The Big Bang Theory was originally written for Yi, but she was eventually fired and replaced by Sara Gilbert.

In the 2009 film Paper Heart, a "hybrid documentary" which Yi executively produced in addition to co-writing, she stars as a fictionalized version of herself, alongside Michael Cera. Cera broke up with Yi in July 2009 after 3 years of dating. However, despite gossip news reports cited in the previous sentence, she has not confirmed that they were dating and denies that they dated at all.

Yi was chosen as one of Venus Zines 25 under 25 women for 2009.

Yi appeared on the Comedy Central series Important Things with Demetri Martin as a musical guest, performing a number of duets with Martin, though these segments were cut from the final episodes when aired.

She has also appeared alongside Saturday Night Live cast member Fred Armisen in the music video for the song "Rabbit Habits" by Philadelphia experimental band Man Man.

Yi and Paul Rust formed the band The Glass Beef. The duo share one electric guitar and both sing lead vocals. In 2006, they released their debut album, The Farewell Album, produced by John Spiker, bassist of Tenacious D. Since then Yi has done solo projects such as Chandelier Teeth and written songs for other musicians in her experiment The Music Scientist.

She is currently in the band Old Lumps, with Jessica Cowley and Dave Horwitz.

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