Lena Dunham facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Lena Dunham
Dunham at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2012
Born	(1986-05-13) May 13, 1986 (age 37) New York City, U.S.
Education	The New School Oberlin College (BA)
Occupation	Writer director actress producer
Years active	2006–present
Spouse(s)	Luis Felber ​ (m. 2021)​
Parents	Carroll Dunham (father) Laurie Simmons (mother)
Relatives	Cyrus Grace Dunham (sibling)

Lena Dunham (/ˈliːnə ˈdʌnəm/; born May 13, 1986) 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. 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. 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. 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.

In 2013, Dunham was included in the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. In 2014, Dunham released her first book, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned". In 2015, along with Girls showrunner Jenni Konner, Dunham created the publication Lenny Letter, a feminist online newsletter. The publication ran for three years before folding in late 2018.

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.

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.

Early life

Dunham was born in New York City. 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. Her father is Protestant of mostly English ancestry; whereas her mother is Jewish. Dunham has described herself as feeling "very culturally Jewish, although that's the biggest cliché for a Jewish woman to say." The works of acclaimed Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai helped her to connect with her Judaism. The Dunham family are cousins of the Tiffany family, prominent in the jewelry trade.

Dunham first 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. As a teen, Dunham also won a Scholastic Art and Writing Award. She attended The New School for a year before transferring to Oberlin College, where she graduated in 2008 with a degree in creative writing.

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. The siblings were raised in Brooklyn and spent summers in Salisbury, Connecticut.

Career

2000s: Oberlin College and early works

While a student at Oberlin College, Dunham produced several independent short films and uploaded them to YouTube.

Dunham on the set of her web series Delusional Downtown Divas

One of her early films, entitled The Fountain went viral on YouTube.

Pressures (2006), Open the Door (2007), and The Fountain (2007) were released as DVD extras with Tiny Furniture.

In 2007, Dunham starred in a ten-episode web series for Nerve.com entitled Tight Shots.

In 2009, Dunham created the Index Magazine web series, Delusional Downtown Divas, which satirized the New York City art scene. The production was unpaid, so Dunham and her friends "pooled their money from babysitting and art-assistant gigs and borrowed some camera gear."

Also in 2009, Dunham premiered Creative Nonfiction—a comedy where she plays Ella, a college student struggling to complete a screenplay—at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. She was initially rejected by the festival the year before; she re-edited and successfully resubmitted the film.

2010–11: Breakthrough with Tiny Furniture

Dunham speaking at the Maryland Film Festival in 2010

Dunham had a career breakthrough with her semiautobiographic 2010 feature film Tiny Furniture; the film won Best Narrative Feature at South by Southwest Music and Media Conference, and subsequently screened at such festivals as Maryland Film Festival. Dunham plays the lead role of Aura. Laurie Simmons (Lena Dunham's real-life mother) plays Aura's mother, and Lena's real-life sibling Cyrus plays Aura's on-screen sibling. For her work on Tiny Furniture, Dunham also won an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay.

The success of Tiny Furniture earned Dunham a blind script deal at HBO. The network set Dunham up with veteran showrunner Jennifer Konner. Konner told Vulture's Jada Yuan that she got involved with Dunham because she was an obsessive Tiny Furniture fan:

I got a copy of Tiny Furniture from [HBO president] Sue Naegle. Actually, [New Girl creator] Liz Meriwether told me about it and said, 'Oh, there's this great movie. This girl, she's 23, she wrote, directed, and starred in it; she's in her underwear the whole time.' And I was like, 'I really don't want to see that.' And then she was like, 'Oh, trust me, it's great.' So Sue gave it to me just because she had it ... I used to, like, give out copies of the movie. But I'd just broken up with my writing partner and couldn't be less interested in the idea of supervising anybody. I really was like, 'I'm going to find my voice, and be on my own.' And then they called me and they were like, 'Oh, the Tiny Furniture girl is doing a show, do you want to supervise her?' And I was like, 'Yes! One million percent. Sign me up. Totally on board.'

Dunham's star was also raised considerably when she was profiled by David Carr in The New York Times; he was later credited with introducing her to Judd Apatow. Apatow watched Tiny Furniture, and was surprised Dunham had also written and directed the film. "I emailed her and told her I thought it was great", Apatow told The Hollywood Reporter. "It turned out she was in the middle of negotiating a deal to develop a show for HBO and that her partner was Jenni Konner, whom I had worked with on Undeclared and a bunch of other projects. They asked me if I wanted to be a part of it, and I was thrilled to jump in."

2012–17: Mainstream success with Girls and first book

Dunham at the premiere of Supporting Characters at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival

Dunham's television series, Girls, was greenlit by HBO in early 2011. Three episodes were screened to positive response at the 2012 South by Southwest Festival.

The series follows Hannah Horvath (portrayed by Dunham), a 20-something writer struggling to get by in New York City. Some of the struggles facing Dunham's character Hannah—including being cut off financially from her parents, becoming a writer and making unfortunate decisions—are inspired by Dunham's real-life experiences.

The first season premiered on HBO on April 15, 2012, and received critical acclaim. The New York Times applauded the series, writing that "Girls may be the millennial generation's rebuttal to Sex and the City, but the first season was at times as cruelly insightful and bleakly funny as Louie on FX or Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO." James Poniewozik from Time reserved high praise for the series, calling it "raw, audacious, nuanced and richly, often excruciatingly funny".

Despite the acclaim, the series also generated significant criticism over its lack of racial representation and other issues.

The first season garnered Dunham four Emmy Award nominations for her roles in acting, writing, and directing the series, as well as two Golden Globe Awards for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy and Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy. In February 2013, Dunham became the first woman to win a Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Comedy Series for her work on Girls.

Girls was renewed for a second season in April 2012, before the first season had finished airing. The finale episode of the first season drew over one million viewers.

The second season of Girls continued to receive critical acclaim. David Wiegland of the San Francisco Chronicle said that "The entire constellation of impetuous, ambitious, determined and insecure young urbanites in Girls is realigning in the new season, but at no point in the four episodes sent to critics for review do you feel that any of it is artificial". Verne Gay of Newsday said it is "Sharper, smarter, more richly layered, detailed and acted". Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly felt that "As bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as it was in its first season, Girls may now be even spunkier, funnier, and riskier". The second season ran on HBO from January 2013 to March 2013, with third and fourth seasons subsequently being renewed. The third season of Girls premiered in January 2014 with over one million viewers. The following month, Dunham hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live with musical guest The National.

In late 2012, Dunham signed a $3.5 million deal with Random House to publish her first book. The book, an essay collection called Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned", was published in September 2014. It reached number two on The New York Times Best Seller list in October 2014.

On January 5, 2015, days before the premiere of the fourth season, Girls was renewed for a fifth season, despite dwindling viewership. That year, Dunham launched A Casual Romance Productions, a production company to develop television and film projects. The company produced It's Me Hilary: The Man Who Drew Eloise. On February 20, 2015, it was reported that Dunham had been cast in a guest role in an episode of the ABC drama series Scandal, which aired March 19, 2015.

Dunham with Avy Kaufman at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival

In September 2015, Dunham stated that the sixth season of Girls was likely to be the last season. This was later confirmed by HBO.

In 2016, Dunham appeared in her mother's film, My Art, which had its world premiere at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival. She also voiced Mary in My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea, a 2016 American animated teen comedy drama film directed by Dash Shaw. It was selected to be screened in the Vanguard section at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival. Dunham also filmed scenes for the film Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, but they were cut from the final film.

In 2017, she portrayed Valerie Solanas, the real-life radical feminist and SCUM Manifesto author who attempted to murder Andy Warhol in the late 1960s, in American Horror Story: Cult.

Girls' sixth and final season concluded on April 16, 2017, leaving a total of 62 episodes in the series.

2018–present: Second book, Camping, and other work

Since 2016, Dunham has been working on a second book that will be published by Random House.

In February 2018, A Casual Romance Productions announced that it would be producing Camping, a remake of the British comedy series of the same name for HBO, with Jennifer Garner in the lead and Dunham and Konner as showrunners and writers. On July 25, 2018, the series held a panel at the Television Critics Association's annual summer press tour featuring executive producer Jenni Konner and cast member Jennifer Garner. The following day, a teaser trailer for the series was released.

Camping has been met with a mixed to negative response from critics upon its premiere. On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the first season holds a 28% approval rating, with an average rating of 5.1 out of 10 based on 32 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "The first season of Camping makes it difficult to determine who the least happy campers are: those on the screen or those watching it." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the season a score of 49 out of 100 based on 26 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

In August 2018, it was announced Dunham would appear in the film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, directed by Quentin Tarantino, which released on July 26, 2019. Dunham portrayed the role of Catherine "Gypsy" Share. In October 2018, coinciding with the expiration of their joint HBO contract, Dunham and Konner split as producing partners, dissolved their production company. In August 2019, Dunham launched a new production company Good Thing Going which has a first look deal with HBO.

In 2019, Lena Dunham and Alissa Bennett started a podcast called The C-Word Podcast produced by Luminary.

In response to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, in March 2020 Dunham announced she would write a serialized novel, Verified Strangers, as a response to social isolation. She added that the act was a response to help herself and the readers in the time of anxiety. The serialization started later that month on the Vogue website. Dunham directed and served as an executive producer on the first episode of HBO's Industry. That same year, she appeared in The Stand In directed by Jamie Babbit.

In 2021, Dunham had a small role in Music, directed by Sia. She also served as an executive producer on Genera+ion, a dramedy for HBO Max.

In 2022, Dunham's second feature film, Sharp Stick, starring Kristine Froseth, Dunham, and Jon Bernthal, was released to mixed reviews. She also directed, wrote, and produced Catherine Called Birdy, an adaption of the children's novel of the same name by Karen Cushman for Working Title Films.

In the media

Dunham has appeared on several magazine covers, including Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire, Popular Mechanics, and Rolling Stone. After Dunham posed with bare legs for Glamour's February 2017 cover, she praised the magazine for featuring an unedited photo and leaving the cellulite on her thighs visible.

Lenny Letter

In 2015, Dunham, with Jenni Konner, co-founded Lenny Letter, a feminist online newsletter. Lenny Letter was initially supported by Hearst Corporation advertising, and subsequently by Condé Nast. In addition to the regular newsletter, Lenny Letter published a Fiction Issue and a Poetry Issue during fall 2015.

Notable articles include an essay written by actress Jennifer Lawrence about the gender wage gap in Hollywood, and one written by singer Alicia Keys about her decision to start wearing little to no make-up.

In October 2018, Dunham and Konner announced that Lenny Letter would be shutting down, reportedly due to a decline in subscribers and failure to build momentum upon other platforms.

Personal life

In 2012, Dunham began dating Jack Antonoff, the lead guitarist of the band fun. and the founder of Bleachers. Dunham and Antonoff remained together until December 2017; they subsequently separated announcing that the separation was "amicable".

Dunham was diagnosed with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) as a child.

In February 2018, Dunham wrote an essay for Vogue about her decision to have a hysterectomy due to endometriosis.

In 2019, Dunham revealed that she has Ehlers–Danlos syndrome (EDS).

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".

After a mutual friend set them up on a blind date, Dunham began dating English-Peruvian musician Luis Felber, in January 2021. In September 2021, Dunham and Felber married in a Jewish ceremony at the Union Club in Soho.

Political activities

Dunham supports gun control, immigrant rights, and gay rights.

In 2014, Dunham was named the Recipient of Horizon Award 2014 by Point Foundation for her support of the gay community.

In April 2016, she wrote in support of Hillary Clinton, pledging to move to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, if Donald Trump won the election. Dunham rebuked Trump for the Access Hollywood tape.

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."

In June 2017, Dunham endorsed Jim Johnson, a Democratic New Jersey gubernatorial candidate. Later that month, Dunham endorsed Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, in the United Kingdom general election.

Filmography

See also

In Spanish: Lena Dunham para niños

• List of Oberlin College and Conservatory people