Lena Dunham
Lena Dunham is a director, born 1986.
Before HBO there was a self funded feature. Lena Dunham wrote, directed and starred in Tiny Furniture in 2010 and won an Independent Spirit Award for best first screenplay, which is how a very cheap independent film turned into a network series two years later.
Girls ran from 2012 to 2017 and made her one of the most argued about figures in American television. It brought Emmy nominations and two Golden Globes, and she became the first woman to win the Directors Guild award for directing a comedy series. The argument has aged better than either side of it did: the writing is exact about the specific humiliations of your twenties, and it is funny about behaviour it never once excuses.
Her directing since has been more interesting than the noise around it. Catherine Called Birdy is a medieval comedy for teenagers with a sour anti romantic streak. Sharp Stick is small, deliberately awkward and split everyone who saw it. Too Much, the Netflix series she created, is the first thing she has made in years that sits inside a familiar shape and looks relaxed about it.
She acts for other people as well, almost always in single scenes: a role in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a barista, a nurse, a voice on the other end of a phone. Born in New York in 1986.
Movies (21)
- Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019)
- This Is 40 (2012)
- I Wish You All the Best (2025)
- Sharp Stick (2022)
- Sharp Stick (2022)
- Side by Side (2012)
- The House of the Devil (2009)
- The Stand In (2020)
- Catherine Called Birdy (2022)
- Music (2021)
- Sky (2016)
- 7 Days in Hell (2015)
- The Innkeepers (2011)
- This Changes Everything (2019)
- Gavin & Stacey: A Fond Farewell (2025)
- Good Sex
- Don't Think Twice (2016)
- My Art (2016)
- 100 Years (2017)
- 100 Years (2017)
- Everything Is Copy (2015)
TV (9)
Where to start with Lena Dunham
Start with Girls, and start at the beginning rather than with a highlight reel, because the first season is the thesis and the later ones are the argument. If you bounce off Hannah, that is the designed response, not a misreading.
Catherine Called Birdy is the best film she has directed and the easiest to recommend to somebody who cannot stand her public persona: funny, generous, and far less interested in her own voice.
Sharp Stick is the harder proposition, deliberately uncomfortable about sex and worth arguing with rather than dismissing. Too Much is the loosest and warmest thing she has made.
For the acting, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood and This Is 40 are the visible cameos, and Camping is the misfire to know about, a remake that never located its own tone.