Greta Gerwig’s latest film Barbie garnered $356 million worldwide in its first weekend in late July, making it the largest launch ever for a female-directed film. Barbie’s ongoing popularity at the box office drove it above $1 billion on August 6, surpassing the ticket sales record for a female-directed film in less than three weeks. Patty Jenkins previously held bragging rights for Wonder Woman (2017), which grossed a total of $822 million.
Who Is Greta Gerwig?
Greta Gerwig is an actress, screenwriter, and director. She began her career largely as an actress, particularly in independent films, and was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in Frances Ha. Her 2017 solo directorial debut, Lady Bird, received positive reviews and earned her Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.
Gerwig’s greatest box office triumph came after she won plaudits for her film adaptation of Little Women, which received good reviews and grossed more than $1 billion. Gerwig frequently works with fellow filmmaker Noah Baumbach, with whom she is romantically involved.
Early Life
Greta Celeste Gerwig was born in Sacramento, California on August 4, 1983. Gordon, her father, worked for a credit union, and Christine, her mother, was a nurse. Gerwig learned ballet as a child, but she dropped out due to her height (she is now 5-foot-9). Her mother arranged for her to study different dance styles such as jazz, tap, modern, and hip-hop.
Gerwig was also a competitive fencer, once finishing third in the state of California. Despite being raised as a Unitarian Universalist, she went to an all-girls Catholic high school because it gave her the flexibility she needed to attend tournaments. Gerwig dropped the sport due to the hefty expenditures, but she still fences on occasion.
Gerwig was active in theater in high school, which she continued to pursue in college. She studied English and philosophy at Barnard College at Columbia University in New York City before graduating in 2006. Kate McKinnon, a future Saturday Night Live cast member, was her college roommate. They collaborated on “really wonderfully strange musicals” and performed in an improv group. Gerwig has also written and performed in plays.
Acting Career: ‘Frances Ha,’ ‘Mistress America,’ and More
Gerwig initially aspired to be a playwright, but after being rejected from MFA programs in playwriting, she shifted her concentration to acting. She made her cinematic debut while still in college, in Joe Swanberg’s LOL (2006). This was her first venture into the “mumblecore” subgenre, which is known for its micro-budget films in naturalistic settings with unscripted language and shaky cameras. She had larger roles in mumblecore films such as Baghead (2008) and Yeast (2008), and she acted in and co-wrote Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007) and Nights and Weekends (2008), the latter of which she also co-directed with Joe Swanberg.
Given the low pay scale of these films, Gerwig had to work many jobs to make ends meet, including tutoring and nannying. However, she advanced to the next level of her career when Noah Baumbach cast her in Greenberg (2010), a film starring Ben Stiller. This was the first of many collaborations between Gerwig and Baumbach, who eventually became romantically linked.
She co-starred in a version of Arthur with Russell Brand in 2011 and had a role in No Strings Attached with Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman. Gerwig also appeared in the 2012 films Damsels in Distress by Whit Stillman and To Rome With Love by Woody Allen.
Frances Ha
Gerwig and Baumbach co-wrote the film Frances Ha (2013), in which Gerwig played a struggling New York City dancer dealing with a lot of difficult relationships and career disappointments. Gerwig’s performance gained tremendous praise.Sight & Sound magazine lauded “the thoughtfulness and commitment of Gerwig’s performance in its shifts from chaotic exuberance to rigorous rehearsal,” while The Independent stated that “Gerwig superbly incarnates the contradictions of this insecure woman.” She was also nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress for the part.
Mistress America and Beyond
Gerwig and Baumbach also co-wrote Mistress America (2015), which starred Gerwig once again. Gerwig, on the other hand, learned that her contribution to these collaborative endeavors is often overlooked. As she told The New York Times in 2017, “Something that used to really hurt me is, people would say, ‘Did you help write the script?’ And I’d say: ‘I co-wrote it. I didn’t “help” to write it.’ It used to make my blood rise.”
Gerwig remained active despite not becoming an A-list actor. Gerwig got the lead role in the CBS pilot How I Met Your Dad, created by the producers of the hit series How I Met Your Mother, in 2014. The pilot, however, was not picked up.
That same year, she appeared in The Humbling alongside Al Pacino. Gerwig was extremely active in the run-up to 2016, appearing in Rebecca Miller’s Maggie’s Plan, Jackie about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and 20th Century Women. Gerwig was also invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2016.
Gerwig hasn’t given up acting but intends to focus on writing and directing. At the Women in Entertainment Summit in 2017, she noted, “I want to produce women’s films, because I think women want to see films made by people who know what they’re talking about, what the experience is.”
Directorial Breakthrough with ‘Lady Bird’
Lady Bird, Gerwig’s 2017 film, is about a year in the life of a Sacramento high school senior who has christened herself “Lady Bird” and is seeking to find her place in the world. Instead than focusing on the protagonist’s romantic partnerships, the film not only tells a coming-of-age story with a female heroine (Saoirse Ronan), but it also shows the love between a daughter and her mother (Laurie Metcalf). Mothers and Daughters was the working title.
Lady Bird received positive reviews when it premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in September 2017. According to Rotten Tomatoes, it received 196 consecutive good reviews (the first negative one arrived in December), setting a record for the most “fresh” ratings. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. It won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.
There are connections between Gerwig’s and Lady Bird’s lives: both grew up in Sacramento and attended an all-girls Catholic high school, and both sets of parents worked in comparable fields. Gerwig, on the other hand, draws a distinction between herself and her character. As she explained in an interview with WTOP radio: “I was nothing like Lady Bird. I never made anyone call me by a different name. I was very much more of a rule follower and gold-star getter. But the core of the movie, the sort of deep, complicated love of a family and a hometown, that’s all really close to my heart.”
Even though Lady Bird became a success, it was not always an easy task to create. Gerwig spent years on the script, which reached 350 pages at one point. She finished it in 2015, but then encountered roadblocks in obtaining funding for the film.
The mother-daughter bond is vital, and Gerwig felt it had been underexplored in film, but male financiers who didn’t have sisters or daughters didn’t always grasp the nuances. Gerwig was also so dedicated to obtaining the rights to songs like Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River” and Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash Into Me” that she wrote letters to the songwriters describing what their music meant to her growing up.
‘Little Women’ and ‘Barbie’
Gerwig’s next writing-directing endeavor, an adaption of Louisa May Alcott’s 19th century masterwork Little Women, thrilled reviewers when it was released in December 2019. The film, starring Lady Bird star Saoirse Ronan and a supporting cast that includes Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Timothée Chalamet, and Meryl Streep, received praise for its faithfulness to the novel’s complex family dynamics, as well as its director’s command of the narrative through chronological reshuffling.
Six Academy Award nominations were given to the film, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, and acting nominations for Ronan and Pugh. It earned the Academy Award for Best Costume Design.
Barbie (2023), a fantasy comedy she co-wrote with Baumbach, starred Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken. While Mattel, the company behind the famous fashion icon, sought a summer blockbuster to kick off a series of brand-extension films, Gerwig aspired to defy viewer expectations and make a commentary on modern life.
The screenplay was inspired by various odd sources, including the account of Adam and Eve in the Bible and John Milton’s Paradise Lost, as well as films such as Powell and Pressburger’s Stairway to Heaven (1946), Vincent Minelli’s An American in Paris (1951), and Jacques Tati’s Mon Uncle (1958).
Barbie grossed $356 million in its first weekend, making it the largest start ever for a female-directed film. The picture was released on the same day as Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, on nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, and the buzz surrounding the “Barbenheimer” double feature culminated in the fourth-largest box office weekend of all time.
Barbie has surpassed the $1 billion mark in ticket sales in less than three weeks, breaking the record for a female-directed film. Patty Jenkins previously held the accolade for Wonder Woman (2017), which grossed a total of $822 million.
Relationship with Noah Baumbach and Children
Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, her constant professional collaborator, began dating after Baumbach’s divorce from Jennifer Jason Leigh. Gerwig and Baumbach had two boys together, one named Harold, and Baumbach also has a son with Leigh.