Yael Stone

Early life and education

Stone was born and raised in Sydney, the daughter of Judy, a nurse, and Harry Stone, an architect. Her father was born in Czechoslovakia, to Holocaust survivor parents. Yael's father is from a Jewish family, and her mother converted to Judaism. Her brother, Jake Stone, was the lead singer of the band Bluejuice. Her sister, Elana Stone, is also a musician.

Stone attended the Newtown High School of the Performing Arts and the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA).

Career

Stone began acting as a child, with roles in the film Me Myself I and the miniseries The Farm. She worked primarily in theatre; at the 2008 Sydney Theatre Awards, she won the awards for Best Newcomer and Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The Kid. She also worked in television, including supporting roles in All Saints and Spirited. From 2010 to 2011, she appeared in The Diary of a Madman, a role for which she was again nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Sydney Theatre Awards. In February 2011, she traveled to New York City to perform in the Brooklyn Academy of Music's production of The Diary of a Madman, before returning to lead roles in A Golem Story, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, and As You Like It in Sydney.

Stone moved to New York permanently in December 2011 and co-founded an experimental theatre company. After four months in New York, she was cast in the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, a show set in a women's prison. Stone plays Lorna Morello, a prisoner from New Jersey; her accent, a mixture of Brooklyn and Boston, was called "the most amazing accent on television" by a journalist for The New Republic, while another reviewer deemed the role to be Stone's "breakout turn". She reprised her role in the show's second season, and was billed as a series regular in the third season.

She has also appeared on the web series High Maintenance.

Personal life

In 2012, Stone married Australian actor Dan Spielman, with whom she lived in New York City. In July 2017, Stone announced that her marriage had ended over a year ago.