My friends and I first experienced Charlyne Yi when we saw the Judd Apatow film Knocked Up a few years ago. She was on screen for only about two minutes, but she was mesmerizing and memorable. She played Jodi, the stoner girlfriend of one of the guys—yet there was nothing typically “girlfriendish” about her. In one of the improvised outtakes on YouTube, she gawks curiously at the prim and pregnant Alison, who has come to visit the house of men (to which Yi—apparently neither man nor woman—has easy, unquestioned entry). She blurts out, “I love fucking kids… I mean! I mean! I fucking love kids! That’s sick.” We couldn’t wait until she starred in her own film.

Last year, happily, she did. At the age of twenty-three, she premiered Paper Heart, a feature she wrote, co-scored, and starred in. The film is a mix of documentary and fiction. She plays a character named Charlyne Yi who is skeptical that she will ever fall in love, so sets off to make a documentary about people who have actually experienced love, to try and figure things out. The documentary parts are actual documentary; not scripted. What’s scripted is the burgeoning relationship between her and the character Michael Cera (played by the film actor Michael Cera). Around the time of the film’s release, rumors proliferated that they were truly a couple and that Cera, whose celebrity was growing, had dumped her. Pity and outrage abounded. Another rumor quickly followed that actually Yi was in her mid-thirties and used to baby-sit for Cera. It seems none this was true; the second rumor was likely a fabrication of Yi’s.

Charlyne Yi grew up in Fontana, California, in a close, loving family. She attended college for a short time, then dropped out and moved to Los Angeles in 2006, where she couch-surfed and lived out of her car while performing stand-up gigs. She quickly gathered a following of comedians and noncomedians, and was one of the original performers at Matt Besser’s Upright Citizens Brigade in Hollywood. In short time, she was running her own monthly nights: The Charlyne Yi Show. The shows, which are ongoing, incorporate audience participation, sketches, music, stand-up, and plays. On the first night of the series, the audience was invited to bring pillows, and mid-way through, a pillow fight among everyone in the room—performers and audience—broke out at the sound of a bell.

In addition to stand-up, Yi has a notable presence on YouTube. She has a talent for collaboration, often working with other comedian friends, including Nick Jasenovec, Paul Rust (with whom she has a band, the Glass Beef) and Jake Johnson. She draws comics, is writing...