No matter how well your day is going, odds are it can’t be better than the day Greta Gerwig is having right now. Following the announcement of the nominee’s for the 90th Annual Academy Awards, Gerwig has made history as the 5th female ever to be nominated in the Best Director category, and the first female director nominated for a directorial debut. Even though the nomination shouldn’t be seen as a surprise, given the overwhelming critical acclaim for her film Lady Bird (which currently has a 99% on Rotten Tomatoes), the accomplishment comes right after Gerwig was notably snubbed in the same category at the Golden Globes. In fact actress Natalie Portman, who presented the category at the Globes, deliberately pointed this out when she said, “and here are the all-male nominees.”
Gerwig was born and raised in Sacremento, California and attended the all-girls St. Francis High School, a very similar environment to the one that the titular character in Lady Bird inhabits during her coming of age story. Gerwig first dipped into playwrighting as an undergraduate at Barnard College in New York, where she starred in the Annual Varsity Show alongside SNL actress Kate McKinnon. After graduating from college, Gerwig found her stride as an actress starring in a variety of mumblecore films and eventually being introduced to her now-partner Noah Baumbach, her co-writer & director for Frances Ha. It is specifically her massive impact as an actress in an indie film that led people to underestimate her as an auteur, when in fact Gerwig is a co-writer on both Frances Ha and Mistress America. But as the brevity of this list of female directors suggests, to succeed as a female director in Hollywood is no easy feat.
See below for the full list of female directors who have been nominated for an Academy Award.
Lina Wertmüller, “Seven Beauties” (1977)
Jane Campion, “The Piano” (1994)
Sofia Coppola, “Lost In Translation” (2004)
Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker” (2010)
Greta Gerwig, “Lady Bird” (2018)
Out of those above, Kathryn Bigelow remains the only director to win the award (so far).
