Greta Gerwig, age forty, is an American actress, writer, and director who is most well-known for her independently written and directed films Lady Bird (2017), Little Women (2019), and Barbie (2023). Her movies spread inspiring and relatable messages specifically to women, presenting deep ideas in entertaining yet thought-provoking ways. Her films go under the genre of coming-of-age while still feeling quite modern. She adds depth and personality to each character, giving them emotionally honest voices that are complex and oftentimes overlooked by watchers.
Gerwig was born in Sacramento, California, and she grew up in a middle-class family. During her time at Saint Francis High School, an all-girls Catholic high school, she took part in several theater productions. Once she graduated in 2002, she envisioned studying musical theater in college but ended up majoring in English.
Her original goal to become a playwright fell through when she was not admitted to the playwright MFA programs. It led her to turn to acting; while she was acting at Barnard, she was given her first minor role in Joe Swanberg’s LOL. Surprisingly enough, although Gerwig’s career started in college, she never officially attended film school. She took observations on-set multitasking as an actress and a writer.
In 2006, she graduated from Barnard College with a degree in English and Philosophy. Outside of the classroom, she performed in the Columbia University Varsity Show with her dorm roommate Kate McKinnon, who later starred in Gerwig’s Barbie. Her first official recognition award was for her artistry as one of Hollywood’s definitive screen actresses of her generation, given to her by the Athena Film Festival in 2011.
Over the years, she directed more and more movies with incredible success. In 2017, she won a Chicago Film Critics Award for Most Promising Filmmaker for one of her most popular movies, Lady Bird. The film stars Saoirse Ronan and Timothee Chalamet, which helped to grow the two actors’ fame. They acted as each other’s [unrequited] love interest again in Gerwig’s Little Women two years later.
Fast forward to 2023, Gerwig delivered Hollywood’s biggest movie of the year – Barbie, the movie amassing almost $1.5 billion at the worldwide box office. She made history with this film, and it became the highest-grossing film ever directed by a woman.
Since college, Gerwig has not failed to impress many with her creativity and hard work, growing from acting to co-writing to directing major studio films. She is undoubtedly an inspiration to many genres of people – women, aspiring filmmakers, writers, and more.
Though many love her, there are many with opposing views, most notably due to her Barbie movie. She received backlash from critics arguing that the movie is “anti-male” and considered propagandist because of its exploration of a society where Barbieland is governed fully by women, where the Kens are inferior without women. People believed that the movie was specifically dissing males due to its uplifting point of view on women. While the movie certainly addresses the issues of the patriarchy, there were no salient hate comments towards men.
The media will inevitably hate on a film no matter what, however, Gerwig did not expect the right-wing takedown of Barbie.
“Certainly, there’s a lot of passion,” Gerwig said in an interview with the New York Times. “My hope for the movie is that it’s an invitation for everybody to be part of the party and let go of the things that aren’t necessarily serving us as either women or men.”
She stated she hoped that the film could provide relief for her audience in all passion. But many watchers felt anger over relief, and this woke reputation of hers stemmed from her take on Little Women years prior. Right-wing pundit Jack Posobeic tweeted that Gerwig’s execution of Barbie was a “man-hating Woke propaganda fest”, and “possibly the most anti-male film ever made”. Similarly, Ginger Gaetz – wife of Republican Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz – tweeted that she felt “let down” by the film and it “neglect[ed] to address any notion of faith or family, and trie[d] to normalize the idea that men and women can’t collaborate positively.”
The backlash Gerwig received and back-and-forth controversies did not stop Barbie from dominating at the box office. She continues to stand firm in her ideas as she acknowledges the hate she receives. Her next project will be film adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia books. As she progresses in her career, she inspires many and brings new ideas into people’s minds through her artwork.
