Aya Cash

Early life

Cash was born in San Francisco, California, on July 13, 1982, to poet and novelist Kim Addonizio and Buddhist teacher Eugene Cash. On her mother's side, she is the granddaughter of tennis champion Pauline Betz and sports writer Bob Addie. Her father's family is Jewish, while her mother is Catholic. Cash has described herself as Jewish, and explained that their surname "was originally something like 'CH-irsch'."

Cash is an alumna of the San Francisco School of the Arts. She graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2004 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting, in partnership with the Guthrie Theater Actor Training Program. She then moved to New York City, where she began her acting career. For years, she struggled financially and worked as a full-time waitress to make ends meet.

Career

Television

Cash’s television appearances include Brotherhood, Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Mercy, and The Newsroom. Cash was also a series regular in the 2011 Fox comedy Traffic Light, which ran for one season. From 2014 to 2019, she starred in the FX Network series You're the Worst as Gretchen Cutler. She received critical acclaim for her performance, with the website The A.V. Club calling her acting in the second season "the best TV performance of 2015".

In 2019, she was cast as neo-Nazi Clara Vought (née Klara Risinger) / Liberty / Stormfront in the second season of the Prime Video superhero dark comedy-drama series The Boys. The second season premiered in September 2020.

In 2020, Cash was cast as local newspaper reporter Cheryl Peterson in a pilot for a Fox sitcom titled This Country. The title was later changed to Welcome to Flatch, which premiered in 2022.

In 2027, she will reprise her role as Clara Vought (née Klara Risinger) / Liberty / Stormfront in the prequel series Vought Rising.

Film

Cash's film credits include The Oranges, Winter of Frozen Dreams, Off Jackson Avenue, Begin Again, The Bits In Between, Game Over, Man!, The Happy House, and The Wolf of Wall Street, in which she had a small role as Janet, Jordan Belfort's assistant.

Theatre

Additionally, Cash has appeared on Off-Broadway. In 2014, she starred in the world premiere of Zoe Kazan's play Trudy And Max In Love. In 2025, she appeared in London's West End as Jessie Stone, in Mark Rosenblatt's play Giant, later reprising the role on Broadway in 2026 at the Music Box Theatre.

Personal life

Cash met writer and producer Josh Alexander when she was his waitress. They dated for seven years before marrying in 2012. They reside together in New York City.

Cash was raised Jewish, but no longer practices the religion, stating, "my mother is Catholic, my father is Jewish, but I was raised Jewish in a very not strict temple [...] then I chose, after my Bat Mitzvah, not to continue." Although she also mentioned that she has participated in Jewish holidays over the years, but not in many of them in recent years.

Cash said that she has a hawk tattooed on her back because she was told that Aya means "hawk" in Hebrew. However, when she visited Israel she was told that "Aya" (איה) is an archaic word for "hawk" (though it is, in fact, the Modern Hebrew word for "honey buzzard", a different bird of prey). Meanwhile, the word "aya" is widely used as the Israeli version of the interjection "ouch."

Cash is a celebrity ambassador for INARA, an NGO that helps war-wounded refugee children from Syria get medical help.

Filmography