Age: 42
female
Greta Gerwig is an American actress, playwright, screenwriter, and director based in NY. She has collaborated with Noah Baumbach on several films, including Greenberg (2010), Frances Ha (2012), for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination, and Mistress America (2015). Gerwig made her solo directorial debut with the critically acclaimed comedy-drama film Lady Bird (2017), which she also wrote, and has also had starring roles in the films Damsels in Distress (2011), Jackie (2016), and 20th Century Women (2016). Greta Celeste Gerwig was born in Sacramento, California, to Christine Gerwig (née Sauer), a nurse, and Gordon Gerwig, a financial consultant and computer programmer. She has German, Irish, and English ancestry. Gerwig was raised as a Unitarian Universalist, but also attended an all-girls Catholic school. She has described herself as "an intense child". With an early interest in dance, she intended to get a degree in musical theatre in New York. She graduated from Barnard College in NY, where she studied English and philosophy, instead. Originally intending to become a playwright, after meeting young film director Joe Swanberg, she became the star of a series of intellectual low budget movies made by first-time filmmakers, a trend dubbed "mumblecore". Gerwig was cast in a minor role in Swanberg's LOL (2006) in 2006, while still studying at Barnard. She then appeared in many of Swanberg's films, and personally co-directed, co-wrote and co-produced one entitled Nights and Weekends (2008). She has worked with good quality directors such as Ti West (The House of the Devil (2009)), Whit Stillman (Damsels in Distress (2011)), or Woody Allen (To Rome with Love (2012)) but success and (international) recognition did not come until Frances Ha (2012), directed by Noah Baumbach, a film she also co-wrote. Both tall and immature, awkward and graceful, blundering and candid, annoying and engaging, Greta has won all hearts in the title role of Frances Ha(liday). In 2017, she wrote and directed the highly acclaimed, semi-autobiographical teen movie Lady Bird (2017), set in 2002-2003, and starring Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, and Timothée Chalamet. In 2011, Gerwig received an award for Acting from the Athena Film Festival for her artistry as one of Hollywood's definitive screen actresses of her generation.
Greta Gerwig
Director
for Director in The Peacock and the Pen: The Flannery O’Connor Story
Suggested by kamsismith
In The Peacock and the Pen, we invite audiences into the life of one of America’s most enigmatic literary voices, Flannery O’Connor—a woman who blended grace and darkness with unmatched Southern Gothic flair. The story is set against the backdrop of the American South in the 1950s and follows O’Connor from her early days as a fiercely intelligent girl in Georgia, through her rise as a sharp-witted but misunderstood writer, to the final years she spent writing in her family's farmhouse while battling debilitating lupus. This is not just the story of an author but a woman whose uncompromising vision collided with the complexities of race, religion, and human frailty in the Deep South. As O’Connor confronts her disease, she finds both a painful kinship and a redemptive purpose through her characters, bringing to life a gallery of unforgettable figures that reveal humanity’s deepest contradictions. The Peacock and the Pen is part intimate character study, part meditation on the creative spirit. We see her iconic moments: her fascination with peacocks (a recurring symbol in her work and her life), her uncomfortable but loving relationship with her mother, and her connection to the Catholic faith that both fueled and constrained her. Through flashbacks, dream sequences, and moments of raw confrontation, we delve into her mind, experiencing her fascination with the grotesque and her fierce, dry wit.
