Noah Baumbach is an American screenwriter and director. He wrote the script for “Barbie” with Greta Gerwig.
So let’s find out some trivia and facts about his life and career.
- Noah Baumbach was on born September 3, 1969
- He is an American film director and screenwriter
- He is known for making comedies set in New York City
- His works are inspired by writer-directors such as Woody Allen and Whit Stillman
- His frequent collaborators include Greta Gerwig, Adam Driver, and Wes Anderson
- Baumbach gained attention for his early films Kicking and Screaming (1995), and Mr. Jealousy (1997)
- His breakthrough film The Squid and the Whale (2005) earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay
- He started his long time collaborations with his partner Greta Gerwig with Greenberg (2010)
- They continued working together on films such as Frances Ha (2013), Mistress America (2015), White Noise (2022), and Barbie (2023)
- His other films include Margot at the Wedding (2007), While We’re Young (2014), and The Meyerowitz Stories (2017)
- His film Marriage Story (2019) earned an Academy Award for Best Picture nomination and Baumbach’s second Best Original Screenplay nomination
- He is also known for co-writing, with Wes Anderson, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) and Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
- Baumbach was born on September 3, 1969, in Brooklyn, New York
- His father, Jonathan Baumbach, was an author of experimental fiction and the co-founder of the publishing house Fiction Collective, taught at Stanford University and Brooklyn College, and was a film critic for Partisan Review
- His mother, Georgia Brown, was a film critic for The Village Voice who also wrote fiction
- His father was Jewish
- His mother is Protestant
- His parents divorced during his adolescence
- This happening served as inspiration for his 2005 film The Squid and the Whale
- Baumbach has three siblings, two of whom are from a previous marriage of his father’s
- Baumbach grew up in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and was determined to become a filmmaker from a young age
- Films that influenced Baumbach include The Jerk, Animal House, Heaven Can Wait, The World According To Garp, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
- He graduated from Brooklyn’s Midwood High School in 1987
- Baumbach received his BA in English from Vassar College in 1991
- While at Vassar, he and fellow future filmmaker, Jason Blum, were roommates
- Blum later produced Baumbach’s first film, Kicking and Screaming in 1995
- Soon after, he briefly worked as a messenger at The New Yorker
- Baumbach’s memoir was acquired by Knopf in 2023
- He is still working on it
- Baumbach has noted that Woody Allen has been “an obvious influence”, stating, “He was the single biggest pop culture influence on me”
- He has cited the films Manhattan, Zelig, and Broadway Danny Rose as influences on his work
- He has also cited Ernst Lubitsch, Max Ophüls, Jean Renoir, Robert Altman, Peter Bogdanovich, Spike Lee, Whit Stillman, Steven Spielberg
- As well as the screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s, and the films of the French New Wave as influences
- His favorite film of all time is E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
- Baumbach met actress Jennifer Jason Leigh in 2001, while she was starring on Broadway in Proof
- The couple married on September 2, 2005. They have a son, Rohmer, who was named after French director Éric Rohmer
- Leigh filed for divorce from Baumbach on November 15, 2010, in Los Angeles, citing irreconcilable differences
- The divorce was finalized in September 2013.
- Baumbach’s romantic and creative collaboration with actress, writer, and director Greta Gerwig began late in 2011
- They met during the production of Greenberg
- In March 2019, it was announced Gerwig and Baumbach had a son
- In December 2022, Gerwig revealed that she was expecting their second child, a son
- She gave birth to him in February 2023
- Baumbach’s brother Nico is a film theorist and assistant professor at Columbia University’s Center for Comparative Media
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