Ania Bukstein

Bukstein was born as an only child in Moscow, USSR, in 1982, to a family of Russian-Jewish descent. Her parents are both doctors; her mother is a speech-language pathologist, and her father is a neuro-oncologist. Growing up in Moscow, she studied classical piano as a child starting at the age of 5, which she says she studied with a strict discipline common amongst children in the Soviet Union. She and her parents emigrated to Israel in the early 1990s when she was 7 years old, while her grandparents still live in Moscow. She began her acting career at age 12. However, in Israel she gave up her dream of becoming a professional concert pianist. As a teenager, she attended Telma Yalin Arts High School in Givatayim, Israel. After her high school graduation, she served as a soldier in the Israeli Air Force Band for two years. After studying French, she then received a scholarship to study in Paris.