Greta Celeste Gerwig (/ˈɡɜːrwɪɡ/; born August 4, 1983) is an American actress, screenwriter, and director, known for acting in and making dialogue-driven independent films. She first garnered attention after working on and appearing in several mumblecore movies. Between 2006 and 2009, she appeared in a number of films by Joe Swanberg, some of which she co-wrote or co-directed, including Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007) and Nights and Weekends (2008).
Since the early 2010s, Gerwig has collaborated with her partner Noah Baumbach on several films, including Greenberg (2010), Frances Ha (2012), for which she received a Golden Globe Award nomination, Mistress America (2015), White Noise (2022) and Barbie (2023). She also appeared in 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' 20th Century Women (2016), and Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs (2018).
Gerwig has had two solo directorial ventures, the coming-of-age films Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019), both of which earned nominations for the Academy Award for Best Picture. For the former, she received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, and for the latter, she was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Gerwig was included in the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world in 2018.
Early life
Gerwig was born in Sacramento, California, and grew up in the River Park neighborhood. She is the daughter of Christine (née Sauer), 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, Irish, and English 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 complete a degree in musical theatre in New York, but ended up graduating from Barnard College with a degree in English and philosophy. Outside class, she performed in the Columbia University Varsity Show with her dorm-mate Kate McKinnon, with whom she later made the live-action Barbie movie.
