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Greta Celeste Gerwig ( ; born August 4, 1983) is an American actress, screenwriter, and film director. Initially known for working on various mumblecore films, such as Baghead (2008) and Yeast (2008), in which she became an important figure in the movement. Since then she has expanded from acting in and co-writing independent films to directing major studio films. 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).
As a solo filmmaker, Gerwig has written and directed coming-of-age films Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019), and the fantasy-comedy Barbie (2023), all of which earned nominations for the Academy Award for Best Picture. For Lady Bird, she received Academy Awards 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.
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 theater in New York; 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).
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 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 Tutoring 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).
Gerwig and Baumbach co-wrote Baumbach's next film, Frances Ha, which was released in May 2013 after having toured the festival circuit since September 2012. Gerwig played the title role, and received a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical for her performance. Richard Brody of The New Yorker wrote "Gerwig may be famed for acting like a nonactor, but she's an extraordinarily accomplished actor (as she proved in Damsels in Distress), and here she puts the movie on her back and carries it from beginning to end, combining the spontaneous inspiration and personal presence of her earlier films". Her third collaboration with Baumbach, Mistress America, was released in August 2015 to generally positive reviews.
In February 2014, Gerwig served as a jury member at the 64th Berlin International Film Festival. In May 2014, Gerwig made her stage debut as Becky in Penelope Skinner's The Village Bike at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York. The production earned mixed reviews but her performance was praised by many including Ben Brantley of The New York Times who wrote, "Ms. Gerwig uses the off-balance, open-faced presence she brought to films like Frances Ha and Greenberg to hook us from the moment we set eyes on her." He added, "Gerwig turns out to be the perfect person to ride right over the edge of a cliff with". The show ran until the end of June. She was nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Actress for her performance. She was cast in the lead role in a spin-off of How I Met Your Mother titled How I Met Your Dad in 2014, but it was not picked up to series.
Gerwig's next starring role was in Rebecca Miller's Maggie's Plan, which premiered as an official selection of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, opening to positive reviews. The film was also screened at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and the 66th Berlin International Film Festival. Peter Bradshaw compared Gerwig's performance to that of Annie Hall and described the movie as being, "a witty and sharp comedy". That same year, Gerwig played supporting roles as White House Social Secretary Nancy Tuckerman in Pablo Larraín's drama film Jackie, and Abigail Porter in Mike Mills' coming-of-age comedy 20th Century Women, earning acclaim for both performances, particularly her work in the latter, for which she earned a nomination for the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actress. Also in 2016, she guest-starred in two episodes of the comedy series The Mindy Project.
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 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 Independent film she was known for," and that her ambition was to be a "big studio director." In October 2024, Pucks Matthew Belloni reported that Gerwig had raised concerns to Netflix chairman Dan Lin about giving the film a theatrical release in addition to being on the streamer. In January 2025, Belloni reported that the adaptation, , would receive an exclusive IMAX Corporation 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.
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 Hand-held camera 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 has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
| Yeast | Gen | |
| Nights and Weekends | Mattie | |
| Quick Feet, Soft Hands | Lisa | Short film |
| I Thought You Finally Completely Lost It | Greta | |
| The House of the Devil | Megan | |
| Art House | Nora Ohr | |
| Northern Comfort | Cassandra | |
| The Dish & the Spoon | Rose | |
| Damsels in Distress | Violet Wister | |
| Arthur | Naomi Quinn | |
| To Rome with Love | Sally | |
| Frances Ha | Frances Halladay | |
| The Humbling | Pegeen Mike Stapleford | |
| Maggie's Plan | Maggie Hardin | |
| Jackie | Nancy Tuckerman | |
| 20th Century Women | Abigail Porter | |
| + Awards and nominations received by Gerwig's films | |||||||
| 2017 | Lady Bird | 5 | 3 | 4 | 2 | ||
| 2019 | Little Women | 6 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 2 | |
| 2023 | Barbie | 8 | 1 | 5 | 9 | 2 | |
Directed Academy Award performances
Under Gerwig's direction, these actors have received Academy Awards nominations for their performances in their respective roles.
| + !Year !Performer !Film !Result | |||
| 2017 | Saoirse Ronan | Lady Bird | |
| 2019 | Saoirse Ronan | Little Women | |
| 2023 | Ryan Gosling | Barbie | |
| 2017 | Laurie Metcalf | Lady Bird | |
| 2019 | Florence Pugh | Little Women | |
| 2023 | America Ferrera | Barbie | |
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