Rise to Fame
Every MFA program she applied to rejected her, so she started acting in no-budget films with Joe Swanberg and the Duplass Brothers. Small enough scene that everyone wrote and directed too. She co-wrote Frances Ha with Baumbach in 2012, which landed her a Golden Globe nomination as an actress. Then she directed Lady Bird in 2017, solo, from her own screenplay. Five Oscar nominations, including Best Director, making her only the fifth woman ever nominated in that category. The playwriting programs that passed on her missed badly.
In the Spotlight
Barbie made $1.447 billion worldwide in 2023, the first film directed solo by a woman to cross $1 billion, and the highest-grossing release in Warner Bros. history. She still wasn't nominated for Best Director at the Oscars. Ryan Gosling said 'disappointed would be an understatement.' That was twice in four years she'd been passed over despite a Best Picture nomination. Now she's directing two Narnia films for Netflix on a reported $200 million budget, and she personally pushed CEO Ted Sarandos to approve a theatrical IMAX release, something Netflix had never done before.
Side Notes
Her entire career in directing started by accident. Rejected from MFA playwriting programs, she fell into acting and then into writing her own material. Every film she's directed (Lady Bird, Little Women, Barbie) has been nominated for Best Picture. Two of the three - Little Women and Barbie - didn't get her a Best Director nomination. She met Baumbach on the set of Greenberg, kept the relationship private for years, and married him at NYC City Hall in December 2023. The Academy's opinion of her direction and Hollywood's opinion of her output have never quite aligned.