Greta Gerwig Has Broken So Many Records With "Barbie," So Here Are 18 Facts About Her
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It's a Barbie world, and we're all just living in it — the movie, directed and cowritten by Greta Gerwig, is crushing records left and right and has brought in over $781 million worldwide at the box office. To celebrate the film, here are 18 facts you might not have known about Greta, the powerhouse woman behind it all:
1.Like the titular Lady Bird in her semi-autobiographical directorial debut Lady Bird, Greta grew up in Sacramento, and her mother was a nurse. Her parents actually appeared in her earlier work, Frances Ha, as Frances's parents.
2.As a child, Greta was a ballerina and was incredibly passionate about dance (much like Frances in Frances Ha). However, she painfully realized that she wasn't "built" physically to be a ballerina, and ended up taking up fencing instead — she ultimately proved very talented at the sport and ranked 3rd in California, and 8th nationally.
Greta has discussed how her fencing background actually proved useful for her mentally when she approached acting. "There is the sense of the fight and you want to win," she told Collider. "Using that energy in a scene can really cut the fat off of something and streamline it. It can make it work for you and activate it for you in a way. If you’re just wallowing in the emotions of it, then sometimes, it doesn’t get as clear as when you can just treat it like a fencing match."
3.Greta attended Barnard College in NYC, where she intended to major in musical theater but ended up majoring in english and philosophy — she graduated in 2006.
4.At Barnard, Greta met and lived with Kate McKinnon who attended Columbia, and they were in an improv group at age 19 where they wrote "wonderfully strange musicals" together. Of course, Kate eventually appeared in Barbie as Weird Barbie.
"She was always the most talented person I knew, and that still holds true," Greta told People about Kate.
5.Greta first realized she was a writer after she wrote a story based on a real-life embarrassing moment where she peed her pants in school while taking a math test.
“I knew in it there was a story that was funny and sweet,” she told the New York Times about her decision to submit said story about peeing her pants to the school's literary journal.
6.While Greta is now known as a writer and director, she started her career as an actor after she was rejected from MFA programs in playwriting — she appeared in films like LOL, No Strings Attached, and Greenberg.
She met her future partner Noah Baumbach on the set of Greenberg — he directed, and she starred in it opposite Ben Stiller.
7.Greta went on to cowrite Frances Ha and Mistress America with Noah, and she starred in both films while Noah directed.
“Something that used to really hurt me is, people would say, ‘Did you help write the script?’ And I’d say: ‘I co-wrote it. I didn’t 'help' to write it,’” she told the New York Times. “It used to make my blood rise.”
8.Greta ultimately decided to take the plunge as a director after she wrote the script for Lady Bird and simply "knew" she had to direct it herself.
“I thought, 'Yes, there is more to learn, but you are not going to keep learning it by not doing it,'" she told the New York Times. "You will only now learn the next part if you go ahead and do it.”
9.After How I Met Your Mother ended in 2014, Greta was attached to star in the CBS spinoff How I Met Your Dad. The pilot was shot, but ultimately, the project wasn't picked up.
In an interview with Stephen Colbert, Greta opened up about enjoying her time working on the project, but ultimately, when they showed the pilot to a focus group, her character didn't test well with audiences. Of course, the project was eventually fully reimagined as Hulu's current series How I Met Your Father starring Hilary Duff.
10.When Greta was sourcing the iconic music for Lady Bird, she wrote personal letters to Justin Timberlake, Alanis Morissette, and Dave Matthews to get permission to use their songs in pivotal moments of the movie.
11.Greta was so passionate about Little Women, she knew she needed to get involved even before Lady Bird ever came out — like so many other women, Jo March and the book were always a major inspiration for her.
"When I heard they were interested in making it, I said to my agent, 'You have to get me a meeting because I have to make this movie,'" she told Time. "I had not made Lady Bird yet. And he said, 'I don’t think they’re ever going to hire you for this.' And I said, 'Well, they have to.' Then, I was able to go talk with them about my ideas, and they did hire me to write it, and it was after Lady Bird had come out that I heard that they would like me to direct it, and did I want to do it? And I kind of had that— 'Would I? I’ve been waiting 30 years!'"
12.Greta hoped and intended that Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet — who had both appeared in Lady Bird and Little Women — would make cameos in Barbie, but the scheduling didn't work out.
"I love them so much. But it felt like doing something without my children," she told CinemaBlend. "I mean, I'm not their mom, but I sort of feel like their mom."
13.Even though Barbie is a massive property and on a mainstream level like none of her other movies before, Greta said that working on it still felt very personal to her.
“I’ve never been part of anything like this,” she told Rolling Stone. “But in a funny way, it feels like the fundamentals are the same. Even though it is Barbie and it is an internationally known brand, the movie feels very personal. It feels just as intimate as Lady Bird or Little Women.”
14.A fact that's very appropriate for her eventual work on Barbie, Greta revealed that she actually played with dolls (including some Barbies) until she was 14, when her peers were already partying.
"I was still doing it in junior high," she told Time. "Kids were drinking, and I was playing with dolls.”
15.When writing Barbie, Greta wrote the role of Ken with Ryan Gosling in mind — so, in her mind, it really couldn't have been anyone else in that role.
"Who else could do this? It’s some combination of Marlon Brando meets Gene Wilder meets John Barrymore meets John Travolta," she told Rolling Stone.
16.One thing that's important to Greta is that making a movie always feels like a joy — and she said that's exactly what the Barbie set was like.
"I love it so much," she told Rolling Stone. "I love every part of making a movie, soup to nuts. And Margot is the same way. For us, it’s Disneyland every day. I honestly can’t believe I get to do this."
17.As a trailblazing female director, Greta acknowledges how special it is that she can inspire a whole new generation of female filmmakers.
"I live really close to the New School and New York University, and these younger women come up to me and say, 'I saw your film, and I want to make my own films,'" Greta told Rolling Stone. "Being recognized by my peers in the Academy, and then having that translate to young women directly — it’s the reason I do it."
18.And finally, despite being a directing powerhouse, Greta is "terrified" for her next project — directing the new upcoming adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia.
"I haven't even really started wrapping my arms around it," she said on the Inside Total Film podcast. "But I'm properly scared of it, which feels like a good place to start."
Come hang out with everyone else who is screaming, crying, and throwing up about Barbie in BuzzFeed’s iOS app. Heck, even Allan is there.
