Her father, Klay Young, began working in the Rainbow Room in 30 Rockefeller Plaza in 1992 as a server and later captain (a place where Kara would eventually attend a special event for Tony Award nominees).

[1] Young had an interest in performing from the age of five, when she learned to mime in an afterschool program at the 92nd Street Y.

[2] She has appeared off-Broadway in plays such as NSangou Njikam's Syncing Ink, Jonathan Payne's The Revolving Cycles Truly and Steadily Roll'd, Stephen Adly Guirgis's Halfway Bitches Go Straight To Heaven (a LAByrinth co-production), Jeff Augustin's The New Englanders, and C.A.

[2][5][6] A Times review of her starring role in All the Natalie Portmans wrote that Young "can fit what feels like a mountain of blood, heart, sinew and febrile emotional response into a frame that can't stretch past five feet".

[6] Young often plays characters much younger than herself, adolescents or even preadolescents, something attributed in part to her small size and wide-set eyes.