The actress and writer, Lara Rosnovsky have a dual nationality, having lived both in the United States and Russia. Born in New York, she was a very young child of Russian parents, and grew up speaking Russian in a bilingual home. In her book, Bite Me, Rosnovsky demonstrates how this identity made her famous. Born as Lola Norskoff in Brooklyn, NY, she was a victim of sexual abuse as a young girl, which left her with many physical disabilities. However, her determination to become an artist later in life led her to become a US citizen, and later a producer, writer, and actress.
Although she had grown up in Russia, it was not until she was in her twenties that she decided to make a career in writing and follow that with a stage career. She never fit the typical image of a successful movie star, having appeared in a large number of films during her adult years. Her height is something of an enigma in Hollywood, with some speculating that she might have been chosen for her height, but there are also those who believe that she was refused a role due to her gender. Whatever the case may be, her lack of height is not a big deterrent to a career in acting, and many believe that she would have had a similar success had she been more proportional in height.
In the book, Rosnovsky gives a clear account of how her personal circumstances led her to turn to acting, and how this transformed her into a fully fledged public personality. As a child, she hid her birth identity, living as a boy to avoid detection, and learning from her foster family how to survive in society as an adopted child. Following her marriage to an American man, however, her height issue became an important consideration for casting decisions.