Greta Gerwig

Greta Gerwig (born August 4, 1983, Sacramento, California, U.S.) is an American actress, writer, and director who became known for the radiant artlessness of her performances in small independent movies before embarking on a successful career as a filmmaker. In 2023 Gerwig made history when her summer blockbuster film Barbie (which she wrote with her partner, Noah Baumbach) became the highest-grossing film of all time by a solo female director.

Gerwig grew up in a middle-class family in Sacramento. She attended an all-girls Roman Catholic high school, where she took part in several theater productions before graduating in 2002. Though she envisioned studying musical theater, she chose to attend Barnard College in New York City, where she majored in English (B.A., 2006). Gerwig acted and wrote plays while in college, and she unsuccessfully sought to enroll in a master’s program in playwriting. However, her boyfriend at the time introduced her to filmmaker Joe Swanberg, who cast her in LOL (2006), a micro-budget and nearly plotless movie about young men preoccupied with technology that was an exemplar of mumblecore. She was thus launched into an acting career.

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Swanberg cast Gerwig in the starring role in Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007), and, while few reviewers liked the movie, most were impressed by her performance. She continued to appear in mumblecore features for the next few years. In addition, she partnered with Swanberg to write, direct, and star with him in Nights and Weekends (2008). Gerwig had a breakthrough of sorts when she was cast in Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg (2010), which starred Ben Stiller. She began to appear in more conventional movies, including Woody Allen’s To Rome with Love (2012). She and Baumbach wrote Frances Ha (2012), in which she starred, and they collaborated again on Mistress America (2015). By that time Gerwig and Baumbach were romantic partners as well. (They married in 2023.) In 2016 Gerwig played the first lady’s social secretary in Jackie and had a supporting role in the well-received 20th Century Women.

Gerwig made her highly anticipated debut as a solo writer and director with the semiautobiographical Lady Bird (2017), a coming-of-age story that focuses on the relationship between the title character (Saoirse Ronan) and her mother (Laurie Metcalf). Gerwig received Academy Award nominations for both her screenplay and her direction, and the movie was nominated for best picture. Gerwig then took on Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel, Little Women. Her adaptation, which she both wrote and directed, earned rapturous reviews upon its release in 2019, and the drama received a number of Oscar nominations, including nods for best picture and adapted screenplay. Gerwig then moved in front of the camera, starring with Adam Driver in White Noise (2022), an adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel about a family dealing with an “airborne toxic event”; the film was written and directed by Baumbach.

In 2023 Gerwig returned to the director’s chair with Barbie, about the iconic—and polarizing—doll. The film chronicles Barbie’s coming-of-age as she encounters the real world, and it is both a celebratory and critical take on the toy. The cast included Margot Robbie in the title role and Ryan Gosling as Ken. Barbie was the highest-grossing film of 2023, topping $1.4 billion worldwide. It received nine Golden Globe Award nominations, winning best song (Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?”) and the inaugural award for cinematic and box office achievement. It also scored eight Oscar nominations, including one for best picture. Gerwig and Baumbach’s nomination in the best adapted screenplay category—rather than best original screenplay—was controversial. Even more so was Gerwig’s snub, as some fans called it, for a best director nomination. Also missing in the nominations list was Robbie for best actress. In 2024 Gerwig addressed the controversy, telling Time magazine, “Of course I wanted it for Margot. But I’m just happy we all get to be there together.”