Greta Gerwig Trivia | 50 facts about the director

Greta Gerwig is an American actress, screenwriter and director. She gained worldwide recognition with her recent movie “Barbie”.

So let’s dive into some trivia and facts about the director.

1. Her full name is Greta Celeste Gerwig
2. She was born August 4, 1983
3. Gerwig is an American actress, screenwriter, and director
4. She first garnered attention after working on and appearing in several mumblecore movies
5. Between 2006 and 2009, she appeared in a number of films by Joe Swanberg
6. Some of which she co-wrote or co-directed
7. Including Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007) and Nights and Weekends (2008)
8. Gerwig collaborated with her partner Noah Baumbach on several films
9. Including Greenberg (2010), Frances Ha (2012), , Mistress America (2015), and White Noise (2022)
10. For “Frances Ha” she received a Golden Globe Award nomination
11. She also appeared in 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)
12. As a solo filmmaker, Gerwig has written and directed the coming-of-age films Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019)
13. Both of which earned nominations for the Academy Award for Best Picture
14. For the former, she received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay
15. For the latter, she was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay
16. Gerwig was included in the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world in 2018
17. Her third directorial, the fantasy comedy Barbie was released in 2023
18. She co-wrote the film with Baumbach
19. Gerwig was born in Sacramento, California, and grew up in the River Park neighborhood
20. She is the daughter of Christine, an OB-GYN nurse, and Gordon Gerwig, who worked for a credit union on small business loans
21. She is close to her parents and they make an appearance in Frances Ha as her character’s parents
22. She has an older brother, a landscape architect, and a sister, a manager at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
23. Gerwig has German, Irish, and English ancestry
24. Gerwig was raised a Unitarian Universalist
25. She attended St. Francis High School, an all-girls Catholic school in Sacramento, and graduated in 2002.
26. She has described herself as having been “an intense child”
27. Gerwig showed an early interest in dance and later took up competitive fencing, but had to quit in part due to the high costs
28. She had intended to complete a degree in musical theatre in New York
29. Gerwig ended up graduating from Barnard College with a degree in English and philosophy
30. Outside of class, she performed in the Columbia University Varsity Show with her dorm-mate Kate McKinnon
31. With whom she later made the live-action Barbie movie
32. Gerwig originally intended to become a playwright, but she turned to acting when she was not admitted to playwriting MFA programs
33. In 2006, while still studying at Barnard, she was cast in a minor role in Joe Swanberg’s LOL
34. She, also, appeared in Baghead by Jay and Mark Duplass
35. She began a partnership with Swanberg
36. This resulted in the duo’s co-writing Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007)
37. And sharing both writing and directing duties on Nights and Weekends (2008)
38. Through these films, she became known as a key figure in the rising mumblecore film movement
39. Often referred to as an “it girl”
40. Although she had an association with a number of other mumblecore filmmakers and appeared in several films, mainstream success remained elusive
41. Gerwig’s films tend to be based on her own experiences
42. 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”
43. Gerwig presses her actors to incorporate their personalities into their performances as well, and says of her writing and directing, “it’s all about actors”
44. In addition, she allows little line improvisation and the script is followed fairly closely
45. 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”
46. Her other influences include Howard Hawks, Ernst Lubitsch, Carole Lombard, Joan Didion, Patti Smith, Chantal Akerman, Claire Denis, Mia Hansen-Løve, John Huston, Mike Leigh and Agnès Varda
47. She lives in Manhattan with American filmmaker Noah Baumbach, her partner since late 2011
48. In March 2019,[76] it was announced Gerwig had given birth to their first child, a son
49. In December 2022, Gerwig revealed that she was expecting their second child, a son, to whom she gave birth in February 2023
50. She has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder