Lena Dunham
Lena Dunham (/ˈliːnə ˈdʌnəm/; born May 13, 1986)[1] is an American writer, director, actress, and producer. She is the creator, writer, and star of the HBO television series Girls (2012–2017), for which she received several Emmy Award nominations and two Golden Globe Awards.[2][3] Dunham also directed several episodes of Girls and became the first woman to win the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Comedy Series.[4] Prior to Girls, Dunham wrote, directed, and starred in the semi-autobiographical independent film Tiny Furniture (2010), for which she won an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay.[5][6] Her second feature film, Sharp Stick, written and directed by Dunham, was released in 2022. Her third film, Catherine Called Birdy, had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2022. It was released in a limited release on September 23, 2022, by Amazon Studios, prior to streaming on Prime Video on October 7, 2022.
Lena Dunham
May 13, 1986
- Writer
- director
- actress
- producer
2006–present
- Carroll Dunham (father)
- Laurie Simmons (mother)
Cyrus Grace Dunham (sibling)
In 2013, Dunham was included in the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world.[7] In 2014, Dunham released her first book, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned".[8] In 2015, along with Girls showrunner Jenni Konner, Dunham created the publication Lenny Letter, a feminist online newsletter.[9][10] The publication ran for three years before folding in late 2018.[11]
Dunham briefly appeared in films such as Supporting Characters and This Is 40 (both 2012) and Happy Christmas (2014). She voiced Mary in the 2016 film My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. On television, aside from Girls, she has played guest roles in Scandal and The Simpsons (both 2015). In 2017, she portrayed Valerie Solanas in American Horror Story: Cult.[12]
Dunham's work, as well as her outspoken presence on social media and in interviews, have attracted significant controversy, praise, criticism, and media scrutiny throughout her career.[13][14]
Early life[edit]
Dunham was born in New York City.[15][16] Her father, Carroll Dunham, is a painter, and her mother, Laurie Simmons, is an artist and photographer, and a member of The Pictures Generation, known for her use of dolls and dollhouse furniture in her photographs of setup interior scenes.[17][18] Her father is Protestant of mostly English ancestry;[19] whereas her mother is Jewish.[20][21][22][23] Dunham has described herself as feeling "very culturally Jewish, although that's the biggest cliché for a Jewish woman to say." The Modern Hebrew poetry of Yehuda Amichai helped her to connect with her Judaism.[24][25][26] The Dunham family are cousins of the Tiffany family, prominent in the jewelry trade.[27][28]
Dunham attended Friends Seminary before transferring in seventh grade to Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn, where she met Tiny Furniture actress and future Girls co-star Jemima Kirke.[29][30] As a teen, Dunham also won a Scholastic Art and Writing Award.[31] She attended The New School for a year before transferring to Oberlin College,[32][18] where she graduated in 2008 with a degree in creative writing.[18]
She has a younger sibling, Cyrus, a 2014 graduate of Brown University, who appeared in Dunham's first film, Creative Nonfiction, and starred in her second film, Tiny Furniture.[18][33] The siblings were raised in Brooklyn and spent summers in Salisbury, Connecticut.[34]
Career[edit]
2000s: Oberlin College and early works[edit]
While a student at Oberlin College, Dunham produced several independent short films and uploaded them to YouTube. Many of her early films dealt with themes of sexual enlightenment and were produced in a mumblecore filmmaking style, a dialog-heavy style in which young people talk about their personal relationships. In 2006, she produced Pressure, in which a girl and two friends talk about experiencing an orgasm for the first time, which makes Dunham's character feel pressured to do so as well.[35][36] "I didn't go to film school", Dunham explains. "Instead I went to liberal arts school and self-imposed a curriculum of creating tiny flawed video sketches, brief meditations on comic conundrums, and slapping them on the Internet."[37]
Personal life[edit]
In 2012, Dunham began dating Jack Antonoff, the lead guitarist of the band fun. and the founder of Bleachers.[158][159] Dunham and Antonoff remained together until December 2017; they subsequently separated announcing that the separation was "amicable".[160][161]
Dunham was diagnosed with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) as a child, and continued to take a low dose of an anxiolytic (Klonopin) to relieve her anxiety until 2018.[162][163] In 2018 Dunham entered rehab for an addiction to benzodiazepines.[164] In April 2020, she celebrated two years of sobriety.[165][166][167]
In February 2018, Dunham wrote an essay for Vogue about her decision to have a hysterectomy due to endometriosis.[168]
In 2019, Dunham revealed that she has Ehlers–Danlos syndrome (EDS).[169]
In July 2020, Dunham reported on Instagram her experience with COVID-19 because she observed people were not taking social distancing seriously. Though she was not hospitalized, she did have "severe symptoms for three weeks".[170]
After a mutual friend set them up on a blind date, Dunham began dating English-Peruvian musician Luis Felber, in January 2021.[171][172][173] In September 2021, Dunham and Felber married in a Jewish ceremony at the Union Club in Soho.[173][172]
It was revealed on a 2024 episode of Finding Your Roots that Dunham is a descendant of Stephanus van Cortlandt (1643-1700), the first native-born mayor of New York City.[174]
Political activities[edit]
Dunham supports gun control,[175] immigrant rights,[176] and gay rights.[177]
In fall of 2012, Dunham appeared in a video advertisement promoting President Barack Obama's re-election, delivering a monologue, which, according to a blog quoted in The Atlantic, tried to "get the youth vote by comparing voting for the first time to having sex for the first time".[178] Fox News reported criticism from conservatives such as Media Research Center's Lauren Thompson, public relations professional Ronn Torossian, and media trainer Louise Pennell, who labeled the advertisement as tasteless, inappropriate, and a ploy to lure the younger female vote.[179] It included a comment from Steve Hall of Ad Rants saying that "not everyone was so offended." A friend of Dunham said the actress was not paid for her performance on the spot, and Dunham defended the ad by tweeting "The video may be light but the message is serious: vote for women's rights." In The Nation, Ari Melber wrote "the ad's style is vintage Lena: edgy and informed, controversial but achingly self-aware, sexually proud and affirmatively feminist."[180]
In 2014, Dunham was named the Recipient of Horizon Award 2014 by Point Foundation for her support of the gay community.[181]
In April 2016, she wrote in support of Hillary Clinton, pledging to move to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, if Donald Trump won the election.[182][183] Dunham rebuked Trump for the Access Hollywood tape.[184]
After Trump's win, Dunham wrote she will not be moving to Canada, saying, "I can survive staying in this country, MY country, to fight and love and use my embarrassment of blessings to do what's right."[185]
In June 2017, Dunham endorsed Jim Johnson, a Democratic New Jersey gubernatorial candidate.[186] Later that month, Dunham endorsed Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, in the United Kingdom general election.[187]