Aya Cash

Aya Rachel Cash (born July 13, 1982) is an American actress. She received a nomination for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series and the TCA Award for Individual Achievement in Comedy for her lead role in the FX/FXX series You're the Worst.

Cash was born in San Francisco, to poet and novelist Kim Addonizio and Buddhist teacher Eugene Cash. Her father's family is Jewish, whereas her mother is Catholic. Cash has described herself as Jewish. Her maternal grandparents are Wimbledon champion Pauline Betz Addie and sportswriter Bob Addie.

She is an alumna of the San Francisco School of the Arts and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater Actor Training Program.

Television

Cash's television appearances include Brotherhood, Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law and 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". Cash most recently appeared in the FX Network series “Fosse/Verdon” as Joan Simon, wife of Neil Simon and close friend to Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon.

In 2019, she was cast to star as Storm Front in the second season of the Amazon's series The Boys.

Film

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

Theater

Additionally, Cash has numerous Off-Broadway credits, and in 2014 starred in the world premiere of Zoe Kazan’s play Trudy And Max In Love.

In 2012, Cash married producer/writer Josh Alexander. They live together in New York City.

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 word for "honey buzzard", a different bird of prey.

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