Aya Cash

Aya Rachel Cash was born on July 13, 1982, in San Francisco, California, to poet and novelist Kim Addonizio and Buddhist teacher Eugene Cash. She is the granddaughter of tennis champion Pauline Betz and sports writer Bob Addie on her maternal side. Cash’s early interest in acting was supported by her father’s neighbor, Margarita Landazuri, one of the first employees for Turner Classic Movies. She pursued formal training at the San Francisco School of the Arts and later graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2004 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting, a program in partnership with the Guthrie Theater. Following her graduation, Cash moved to New York City to begin her acting career, initially working as a waitress while navigating the industry.

Her career trajectory includes notable roles across various mediums. On television, Cash gained significant recognition for her starring role as Gretchen Cutler in the FX/FXX dark comedy series “You’re the Worst,” which aired from 2014 to 2019. This performance earned her critical acclaim, including nominations for the Critics’ Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series and the TCA Award for Individual Achievement in Comedy. Prior to this, she appeared in episodic roles on series such as “Law & Order” (2006), “Brotherhood” (2007), and “The Newsroom” (2013), and was a series regular in the 2011 Fox comedy “Traffic Light.” In 2020, Cash joined the cast of the Amazon Prime Video superhero drama series “The Boys” as Stormfront, a role she continued through 2022. More recently, she played Cheryl Peterson in the Fox sitcom “Welcome to Flatch” (2022-2023) and Anita in the HBO series “The Franchise” (2024).

Cash’s film credits include appearances in “The Oranges” (2011), “Sleepwalk with Me” (2012), “Begin Again” (2013), and a role as Janet, Jordan Belfort’s assistant, in Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013). She also featured in “Mary Goes Round” (2017), “Game Over, Man!” (2018), and “Scare Me” (2020). In theater, Cash has performed Off-Broadway and starred in the world premiere of Zoe Kazan’s play “Trudy And Max In Love” (2014) and later as Jessie Stone in Mark Rosenblatt’s play “Giant” (2025) in London’s West End. Her work has received various accolades, including a Critics’ Choice Super Award for Best Actress in a Superhero Series for “The Boys” in 2021. Beyond her acting, Cash actively supports humanitarian causes, serving as a celebrity ambassador for INARA, an NGO assisting war-wounded refugee children from Syria.