Hari Nef is the definition of multitalented. Nef, who hails from Philadelphia, got her big acting break when she appeared in "Transparent" as Pfefferman family ancestor Tante Gittel. Since then, she's also starred in Sam Levison's "Assassination Nation," played Blythe in the first season of Netflix's "You," and landed a role in the "Sex and the City" reboot, "And Just Like That."
Up next, she will star in the 2022 comedy "1Up" alongside Ruby Rose. In addition to her acting roles, she has also graduated from Columbia, signed with IMG Models, written a sex advice column for Adult Magazine, and been designated an It girl by The New Yorker, among other things. Nef is a New York staple at this point, and she knows the city well. In 2019, she told L'Officiel that a New Yorker is "a person that cannot possibly exist anywhere else, a distinctly American sensibility that fuses with a certain skepticism. In many ways, being a New Yorker is a refusal."
Her ambitions don't stop with becoming an NYC fixture on par with Fran Leibowitz or Chloë Sevigny. "I've kind of committed to being a company woman for this industry," she told InStyle. "I want to learn how the godd*mn sausage is made. I can't get away from wanting to do this stuff, so I don't care how long it takes."
To get there, she is sure to prioritize mental and self-love. "I feel like so many of us achieve things that are great, but we don't actually allow ourselves to feel them and appreciate them," she told Byrdie in 2020. "You see yourself so clearly and you see all your flaws and your details. But if you zoom out, people aren't really looking for those things, and nobody really cares about you as much as you care about yourself. Nobody is paying attention to your body as much as you're paying attention to your body."
Like any true New Yorker, if you go by her definition, Nef is generally a skeptic, though she feels that increased disillusionment is a symptom of a more interconnected world. "The world is getting smaller and the wool is being pulled from a lot of people's eyes, and when people are able to see the ways in which they are pressed, or the ways in which they are missing out, or the things other people have that they don't," she said in As If Magazine. Yet, she added, "at the end of the day, it's a question of wanting love." She was referencing her character Bex's true desires in "Assassination Nation," but of course, the statement is universally applicable.
