Along with her husband Guy Nattiv, she won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 2019 for producing the drama Skin (2018).

Newman received her elementary education at the Jewish Hillel Day School of Metropolitan Detroit,[8] where she starred as Ado Annie Carnes in an eighth-grade play of Oklahoma!

After Hillel, Newman attended the private Cranbrook Kingswood School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan,[9] and spent her summers at the Interlochen Center for the Arts where she won the Corson Award for Outstanding Achievement in Acting.

[10] While in high school at Cranbrook, she won first place in the Michigan Interscholastic Forensic Association, a statewide dramatic competition, for three years in a row.

Newman and School Boy Crush played regularly at The Buffalo Club in Santa Monica, California; Moomba in West Hollywood; Nick's Martini Lounge; Café Cordiale; and at the Lux in Beverly Hills.

In January 2003, Newman starred with David Schwimmer, Jonathan Silverman and Tom Everett Scott in the play Turnaround, Roger Kumble's dark Hollywood satire.

[13] In October 2006, Newman began an eight-episode run in a recurring role in the critically acclaimed CW show Veronica Mars.

[22] In 2013, she starred opposite James Van Der Beek, Kathy Baker and Chris Mulkey in the American stage premiere of the Australian play The Gift at the Geffen Playhouse.

[29] In December 2015, Newman joined the fourth-season cast of Bates Motel as the major recurring character Rebecca Hamilton, a past love interest of Sheriff Romero (Nestor Carbonell).

[31] In August 2016, she was cast in the recurring role of Wildred Darnell on the fifth season of TNT's procedural drama series Major Crimes.