How Greta Gerwig went from depressed, out of work and ‘crying every day’ to being tipped for an Oscar
The American actress' directorial debut has earned four Oscar nods... and Best Director is one of them
GRETA Gerwig is the first woman to be nominated for a Best Director Oscar in eight years - and to some people, it might seem she has come out of nowhere.
Lady Bird is a classic coming of age story of a stubborn teen graduating from high school in the early noughties - and has parallels with the 34-year-old's own life.
But while the rolling credits bring an end to Lady Bird's story, Greta has previously spoken about what happened to her as a young woman, admitting to a battle with depression and confidence issues.
Lady Bird - played by Saoirse Ronan - is desperate to leave her Sacramento home for a more high brow adulthood in New York "or even Conneticut" much to the dismay of her mother - Roseanne star Laurie Metcalf.
Greta admits her mum was similarly blunt, recalling how her mum was limited in how far she was willing to indulge her teenage obsession with dance.
Speaking of her 'strict Catholic' upbringing, she said: "I was an intense child. When I loved an activity, I had trouble doing it halfway.
It was scary with ballet – I would have gone to class for four hours a day, seven days a week, if I could have."
When her mum found out that the teacher had given all the students a new "ballet name", she declared the classes as being nothing more than a "cult" and put the then 12-year-old Greta in to a hip hop class.
After graduating from school, she told her mum that she wanted to go to New York to attend dance college.
She said: "This was another of my mum's great moments, where she said, 'I'm not spending $40,000 a year for you to learn how to tap dance.'"The film, she says, isn't based directly on her life, but it does have similarities.
Like Lady Bird, Greta graduated from Catholic high school in Sacramento in the early noughties - but she told that she was nothing like the stubborn, argumentative teen in her youth.
She said: "I passed my drivers' test the very first time . . . I was much more of a rule follower, people-pleaser kind of kid.
"I really wanted the gold star, and it would devastate me if I didn't get it. In a way, writing the movie was like exorcising some id or demons or something I didn't have access to at the time, inventing the more untethered version of perhaps who I was, but it was not something I had access to at the time.
"It feels very personal to me, and it definitely has a core of truth that is very connected to me, even though it's not literally the events of my life and I was not like Lady Bird."
She added that she was compelled to look back at this time in her life it was lacking something that makes storytelling in the present day near-impossible - the internet.
"I wanted it in the moment before the internet took over everything.
"It was coming, but it wasn't quite there yet. You could still not have a cell phone.
"There was no Facebook. There was no Instagram, there was no Snapchat, and I think so much of how teenagers live their lives now is that way, and I just don't think it's that cinematic.
"So selfishly I just didn't want to shoot it."
Lady Bird has not only resulted in an Oscar nod for Greta, but also for Saiorse and Laurie, plus an additional nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
The film has already earned a cult following, just like 2012 film Frances Ha, another film that appears to borrow heavily from Greta's life.
The main protaganist is a girl in her twenties desperate to make it as a modern dancer in New York.
She wrote Frances Ha alongside her partner of seven years Noah Bambauch, but was reluctant to also appear in the film - but he insisted that she did.
"Noah said, 'That's ridiculous – you're playing Frances'," she told The Guardian.
"But it feels kind of disgusting, like baking a cake and eating it yourself. Like, I wrote it, and now I'm doing it! It felt very Orson Welles."
But not all of her work has been well recieved, and she admits that she suffered a deep depression after 2010 movie Greenberg, in which she co-starred alongside Ben Stiller flopped.
The film was well received by critics but bombed at the box office, with people finding the quirky romance boring and more serious that Ben Stiller's usual fare.
Rather than the film boosting her career, Greta didn't work for almost a year - but it did bring her and Noah Baumbach together - he wrote it.
She said: "I was really depressed. I cried a lot. It was a hard year.
"I was 25 and thinking, 'This is supposed to be the best time and I'm miserable.' Looking back, I wish I had taken that time and written more, but it felt like acting was happening for me, and I went back to acting classes.
"The blessing and curse of my life is that I think I thrive when I have a singular purpose and a calling. But actually I'm happiest when I'm doing lots of things. And I have to reconcile that."
For now, she's making other people happy, especially other young women who look back on the years just before and after the atrocities of 9/11 with rose tinted glasses.
She added: "I’ve had girls, really smart girls, come up to me, and they’re so excited that they’ve finally got their movie.
“A lot of them say, ‘That was me! I was Lady Bird.’ The film has actually made them understand that whole period a bit more. You feel like it’s almost a photo album you’re looking back on."
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