Who is Lena Dunham?
LENA Dunham rose to stardom after she wrote, directed, and starred in the hit TV show Girls.
The show came out in April 2012 and ran for six seasons, ending in 2017.
Who is Lena Dunham?
Lena Dunham is an American actress, writer, producer, and director best known for the HBO series Girls for which she won two Golden Globes.
She also directed several episodes of Girls and became the first woman to win the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series.
Her career kicked off when she 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.
After Girls finished she went on to have a re-occurring role in American Horror Story.
While Dunham got her start in Tiny Furniture, she had the opportunity to be in the film, Riding in Cars with Boys.
She attended her first audition in front of director Penny Marshall when she was 12 years old, Dunham said on SiriusXM's .
Dunham said Marshall told her and the other children vying for the role to tell her their names, where they're from, and told them to smile.
When it was Dunham's turn, she said she told Marshall: "I'm Lena, I'm from New York, and I don't smile on command." She said Marshall responded: "It's called acting honey," and the part was given to someone else.
"I understand why I didn't get the role," Dunham said on the show, adding: "The thing is, she was right. Would you hire an actor who is like 'I'm sorry, I can't smile on command?'"
She added: "The thing is, I'm with Penny on this one. I remember going home and knowing that I had 'screwed the pooch' so to speak, and my mother says that I laid in bed for like a week and moaned 'my career is over.'"
Despite the negative experience, Dunham was able to move on in her career starting with Tiny Furniture and her hit TV series, Girls. Her net worth as of 2022 is $12million, according to .
Is Lena Dunham producing another film?
Dunham's new film, Catherine Called Birdy premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival before it moved to select theaters for a limited time.
The movie, based on the 1994 book of the same name, is set in medieval England and centers around Catherine, who goes by Birdy, a 14-year-old girl who refuses to pursue the life of courtship and suitors her father has set up for her while growing in emotional maturity.
Dunham said she loved the book as a child and when she reached out to the author for the rights to create the movie, she received an automatic "Yes."
The author, Karen Cushman is now 80 years old and hadn’t seen Girls when Dunham approached her, but she had watched Tiny Furniture, which she called "depressing."
“I thought she was amazing at her young age to do what she had done, and I was hoping she had over the years cheered up a little after Tiny Furniture," Cushman told .
Dunham told the outlet that Catherine Called Birdy is much like her other works, in the sense that “they are all about different moments in the coming-of-age story."
She said although each project she had worked on is set in a different era, “I hope that they all offer a sense of how complicated that moment is, especially for young women, and how both invigorating and terrifying it is and the way that it kind of cracks you open.”
Her excitement over the film is something she has been hoping for since she created Girls, and while she said she knows the new movie will be compared to the TV show, she was driven to create something that will make viewers fall in love with the story as she did.
“I feel lucky there’s a little bit of space so that hopefully this movie, which I care so much about and which feels in so many ways like the culmination thus far of my life’s work, will have a chance to stand on its own,” Dunham said.
Viewers will be able to stream Catherine Called Birdy on Amazon Prime starting October 7, 2022.
What did Lena Dunham say about Pride Parade?
Dunham is facing backlash after saying she wants her casket to be carried in when she dies.
She announced her wish in a tweet on October 2, writing: “When I go, I want my casket to be driven through the NYC pride parade with a plaque that reads, ‘She wasn’t for everyone, but she *was* for us.’ Who can arrange?”
People on Twitter quickly responded, and one person wrote: “Gonna start living my life with whatever amount of confidence Lena Dunham has that makes her think she’s an LGBTQ+ icon."
Dunham has repeatedly said she is an LGBTQ+ advocate, and when receiving the 2014 Horizon award for her advocacy, she admitted that she wished she was gay and was "disappointed" when she came of age and realized she liked men.
Dunham's sister came out as gay shortly before she was presented with the Horizon award, and she said she was thrilled because "someone in this family can truly represent my beliefs and passions.”
However, people posed her comments as a joke, with one person commenting on Dunham's post: “She died as she lived: in a ploy for attention that was as puzzling as it was desperate."
Another person tweeted: "I'm generally like 'women need to take up more space!' and then Lena Dunham talks and I'm like 'no not you.'"
Although the majority of responses appeared to be defiant over Dunham's self-proclaimed connection to the LGBTQ+ community, one person responded in defense of her comment.
"I see the only people that follow Lena hate her — which I’m still trying to figure out Twitter—do we only follow people we don’t like so we can post angry tweets?" the person wrote.
He added: "Anyway, as a fem gay man, I’ll take any ally I can find (& for those looking, there aren’t many)."