Greta Gerwig

Gerwig was included in the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world in 2018. Gerwig began her career working with Joe Swanberg on films such as Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007) and Nights and Weekends (2008). She has collaborated with her husband Noah Baumbach on several films, including Greenberg (2010) and Frances Ha (2012), for which she received a Golden Globe Award nomination, Mistress America (2015), and White Noise (2022). She also acted in such films as Whit Stillman's Damsels in Distress (2011), Woody Allen's To Rome with Love (2012), Rebecca Miller's Maggie's Plan (2015), Pablo Larraín's Jackie (2016), Mike Mills's 20th Century Women (2016), and Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs (2018). For Lady Bird, she received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, and for Little Women, she was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. Both of these films explored themes of girlhood, artistic ambition, and mother-daughter relationships. Barbie, which she co-wrote with Baumbach, became the only film from a solo female director to gross over a billion dollars worldwide, and earned her a second Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Greta Gerwig studied at Barnard College. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is acting, film direction and film screenwriting. Positions recorded include President of the Jury at the Cannes Festival. Distinctions recorded are National Board of Review Award for Best Director, Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay, Time 100 and Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Original and Adapted Screenplay.

Gerwig was born in Sacramento, California, and grew up in the River Park neighborhood. She is the daughter of Christine, an OB-GYN nurse, and Gordon Gerwig, who worked for a credit union on small business loans. She is close to her parents and they make an appearance in Frances Ha as her character's parents. She has an older brother, a landscape architect, and a sister, a manager at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Gerwig has German ancestry. Gerwig was raised a Unitarian Universalist. She attended St. Francis High School, an all-girls Catholic school in Sacramento, and graduated in 2002. She has described herself as having been "an intense child." Gerwig showed an early interest in dance and later took up competitive fencing but had to quit, in part due to the high costs. She had intended to study musical theatre at either NYU or UCLA; however, she ended up graduating from Barnard College with a degree in English and philosophy. Outside of class, she performed in the Columbia University Varsity Show with her dorm-mate Kate McKinnon, who starred in Gerwig's Barbie (2023).

Gerwig originally intended to become a playwright, but she turned to acting when she was not admitted to playwriting MFA programs. In 2006, while still studying at Barnard, she was cast in a minor role in Joe Swanberg's LOL, and appeared in Baghead by Jay and Mark Duplass. She began a partnership with Swanberg, which resulted in the duo co-writing Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007), and sharing both writing and directing duties on Nights and Weekends (2008). Through these films, she became known as a key figure in the rising mumblecore film movement and was often referred to as an "it girl". Despite her consistent association with the movement, Gerwig dislikes the term "mumblecore", and has defended the style by saying, "People had gotten used to a version of a movie at a film festival that was like a calling-card for the real movie you were going to make later. What was different about these movies was these filmmakers were like, 'There is not another movie. This is the real movie.'" Although she had an association with a number of other mumblecore filmmakers and appeared in several films, mainstream success remained elusive. Of this period in her life, Gerwig has said, "I was really depressed. I was 25 [in 2008] and thinking, 'This is supposed to be the best time and I'm miserable' but it felt like acting was happening for me, and I went back to acting classes." In order to support herself financially, she worked as a nanny and a tutor for the SAT, while continuing to audition and develop collaborative film projects. She went on to appear in other independent films of the late 2000s, such as Yeast (2008) and The House of the Devil (2009).

In 2017, Gerwig made her solo directorial debut (after having co-directed Nights and Weekends) with the coming-of-age comedy-drama film Lady Bird, which she also wrote. It starred Saoirse Ronan in the title role. Lady Bird premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and was theatrically released in November 2017. The film grossed over $78 million against its $10 million budget worldwide. Lady Bird received critical acclaim, with reviewers particularly lauding Gerwig's screenplay and direction. The film was chosen by the National Board of Review, the American Film Institute, and Time magazine as one of the top ten films of 2017. According to the review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, it was given 196 positive reviews in a row, making it the record-holder for the most "fresh" reviews, until the first "rotten" one arrived in December 2017. As of 2019, it had a 99% rating on the aforementioned website. At the 75th Golden Globe Awards, Lady Bird won Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and Best Actress – Musical or Comedy for Saoirse Ronan, and also received nominations for Best Supporting Actress for Laurie Metcalf and Best Screenplay for Gerwig. At the 90th Academy Awards, it was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Gerwig, Best Actress for Ronan, and Best Supporting Actress for Metcalf. With the nominations announced, Gerwig became the fifth woman in Oscar history to be nominated for Best Director. When she found out about the nominations, Gerwig said she was "in various states of laughing and crying and yelling with joy." In 2018, following the success of Lady Bird, Gerwig was part of the voice cast of Wes Anderson's stop-motion animated film Isle of Dogs, which premiered at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival to critical acclaim, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. In June 2018, it was announced that Gerwig would direct a new film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women, whose script she had been previously hired to write. With an ensemble cast led by Ronan, Little Women was released in December 2019 to widespread critical acclaim. At the 92nd Academy Awards, it received six nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actress for Ronan, Best Supporting Actress for Pugh, Best Adapted Screenplay for Gerwig, Best Original Score, and a win for Best Costume Design. The film was frequently mentioned as part of an Oscars controversy after no woman (including Gerwig) was nominated for Best Director, a snub that was publicly noted by Hillary Clinton and Saturday Night Live, amongst others. Gerwig's name was one of those featured on the outfit that actress Natalie Portman wore to the ceremony, which featured the surnames of snubbed female directors from that year's ceremony.

Gerwig co-starred with Adam Driver in Baumbach's 2022 film White Noise, adapted from the novel of the same name by Don DeLillo for Netflix. The movie opened both the 79th Venice International Film Festival and the 60th New York Film Festival and was made available on the streaming platform in late 2022. Gerwig also directed and co-wrote with Baumbach the fantasy comedy Barbie for Warner Bros. Pictures, based on the Barbie fashion dolls by Mattel. It finished filming in 2022 and opened theatrically on July 21, 2023. The movie features Margot Robbie in the title role alongside Ryan Gosling (as the doll Ken). The film was a commercial success, and eventually crossed the $1 billion gross mark worldwide, making Gerwig the first woman with sole director credit to have a movie make more than $1 billion at the global box office. It received critical acclaim and other accolades, including eight Academy Award nominations, among them Gerwig and Baumbach for Best Adapted Screenplay. This marked a big change in Gerwig's career, moving from small-scale, character-driven movies to huge studio blockbusters. Gerwig worked on the screenplay for Disney's live-action film Snow White but was uncredited. She describes her role as "I was hired for a couple of weeks. I did a 'pass' — I wrote some jokes." The New Yorker reported in July 2023 that she had been hired by Netflix to write and direct two film adaptations of C. S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia book series. Gerwig's talent agent, Jeremy Barber, said that she was "looking to move beyond the small-scale dramas she was known for," and that her ambition was to be a "big studio director." In October 2024, Puck's Matthew Belloni reported that Gerwig had raised concerns to Netflix chairman Dan Lin about giving the first film, Narnia: The Magician's Nephew, a theatrical release in addition to being on the streamer. In January 2025, Belloni reported that the adaptation would receive an exclusive IMAX release in November 2026, before being released on Netflix on Christmas. In 2024, Gerwig presided over the feature film jury for the Official Competition of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first American female director to take on the role of Jury President at Cannes Film Festival.

Many of Gerwig's movies, including Lady Bird and Little Women, heavily reference her personal experiences, especially her relationships and upbringing. In a behind-the-scenes video on the set of Lady Bird she said, "I tend to start with things from my own life, then pretty quickly they spin out into their own orbit." Gerwig encourages actors to bring aspects of their own personalities into their performances as well, and says of her writing and directing, "it's all about actors." But still, allowing little line improvisation and adhering closely to the script. Gerwig stated that she wrote Lady Bird as a "love letter" to her hometown of Sacramento, drawing on her own childhood and sense of home she only understood after she left, showing how important connection to place and memory is to her filmmaking. She worked closely with her cinematographer Sam Levy to compose each shot, steering clear of handheld or documentary-style camerawork, and employing a pastel color scheme influenced by Northern California in order to create a visual style that feels like "a memory". In an interview with Maclean's, Gerwig cited Woody Allen as a major influence in her work stating, "His influence is hard to measure because it runs so deep". Her other influences include Howard Hawks, Ernst Lubitsch, Carole Lombard, Joan Didion, Patti Smith, Federico Fellini, Chantal Akerman, Claire Denis, Mia Hansen-Løve, John Huston, Mike Leigh and Agnès Varda.

Gerwig lives in Manhattan with her husband and writing partner, filmmaker Noah Baumbach, whom she married in 2023 after 12 years together. They have two sons together, born in March 2019 and February 2023. Gerwig has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.