- Filmmakers and real-life couple Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach met on the set of Greenberg, and have since collaborated on several films, including Frances Ha.
- Gerwig and Baumbach welcomed their first child together, a son named Harold, in March 2019. That same year, Gerwig released Little Women while Baumbach was behind Marriage Story.
- Their movies each received six Oscar nominations.
Greta Gerwig and boyfriend Noah Baumbach are on fire. A power couple whose relationship timeline stretches across almost a decade, the two have managed to keep their personal lives relatively secret and shielded from the public eye. Together, they've ironically used the intricacies of their own love story into films for the world to see—and root for during awards season.
As The Hollywood Reporter recently declared in a cover story about them, Gerwig and Baumbach are the "first couple of film." If that's the case, then awards season of 2020 will prove the ultimate test of their relationship and their artistry: Both Gerwig and Baumbach directed movies that are up for awards. On January 13, their films both received six Oscar nominations.
Gerwig wrote and directed a star-packed, subversive adaptation of Little Women, with a Laurie (Timothée Chalamet) who may unseat Christian Bale's 1994 Laurie as the ultimate heartthrob. Baumbach's wrenching movie Marriage Story, starring Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson as a couple coming apart, already inspired debate (and memes) from Netflix viewers, and is poised to win awards.
Normally, the couple is collaborating, not competing. Laura Dern, who is close to the couple and appeared in both Marriage Story and Little Women, gave The Hollywood Reporter a glimpse of their relationship.
"They work so beautifully together, even when their work is separate. With Greta and Noah, you can't separate out the impact and influence [they have on each other] and how it impacts their individual work," Dern said.
In honor of their most recent project—the upcoming Barbie live-action movie—let's look back at the milestones (and films) that have brought them closer.
Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach met on the set of Greenberg in 2010.
Baumbach, a Brooklynite who has spent his filmmaking career cementing his voice in the independent genre, cast Gerwig, a Sacramento native who became the fifth woman nominated for the Best Director Oscar, to star opposite Ben Stiller in Greenberg. But it wasn't exactly love at first sight. Or was it?
Married at the time, Baumbach's then-wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh, gave birth to the pair's first child, a son named Rohmer, on the heels of Greenberg's release in 2010. Shortly after, they split, signing on the dotted line after five years of marriage. According to The New Yorker, Gerwig had no effect on the breakup: "Baumbach and Gerwig firmly place the start of their romance at a point after his separation."
Frances Ha was the couple's first collaboration, but not their last.
Two years later, Frances Ha happened. A first-time collaboration—he directed and co-wrote; she co-wrote and starred—Frances Ha is a black-and-white comedy full of joy that had the world—and Baumbach—falling in love with Gerwig.
At the time, they neither confirmed nor denied an existing relationship. Although in an interview with The New Yorker, Baumbach did let his admiration for Gerwig slip, comparing her to cinematic icons of Hollywood's golden age. "Greta has old studio-system chops," he said. "Carole Lombard, Katharine Hepburn, they could be in something totally dramatic, or totally funny; they could sing, they could dance. Frances was intended to be a showcase for [Greta] to do a lot of this."
The couple continued to work together. After Frances Ha came Mistress America, a 2015 comedy co-written by the couple. Baumbach also cast in a series called The Corrections that HBO passed on, sparking even more rumors about their connection.
Throughout the process, Baumbach and Gerwig showed a real admiration for one another in interviews. "Greta's one of the funniest people I'd ever met, both as an actor and a person, and she also has this incredible vulnerability," Baumbach told The Globe and Mail in 2013.
Giving a tantalizing hint of their home life, Gerwig told Vogue, “I think the pleasure of writing for us is that it seeps into everything." Baumbach elaborated. “I’d show her a cut of my movie, and then a few months later, I’m watching her movie. I don’t want to sound sickeningly happy, but it’s a truly great thing to watch someone you love make something and love the thing they make. I don’t know how else to say it without saying great a lot.”
Gerwig would have created movies no matter what.
Over the course of their relationship with Baumbach, Gerwig has gone from an actress to a co-writer to an acclaimed director. Baumbach has witnessed these changes—but he's not responsible for them.
Though Gerwig told Vogue that Baumbach has been "the most important" collaborator in her life, she knows she would have created movies on her own, anyway. "I think I was hell-bent on making my own films, so I would’ve done it anyway," Gerwig said in 2019. She held the same beliefs back in 2015, telling The Guardian: "I'm lucky to find collaborators and kindred spirits. But I don't need a man, and I would have done it anyway."
They finally went public in 2018.
In a rare outing, the couple stepped out holding hands together at the 2019 Oscars and Golden Globes, as Gerwig's Lady Bird was a front-runner nominated for multiple awards at both ceremonies. When Lady Bird won Best Comedy at the Globes, Gerwig during her acceptance speech did something we can all relate to: She forgot to thank her S.O.
"I had an entire speech that I was going to give and I got up there and none of it came out," she said during an interview on The View, below. "I looked at Oprah and I was like, 'It's gone!'…I had a whole thing about him. He's my favorite writer and my favorite first reader."
The pair welcomed their first child in March 2019.
After almost a decade of silently strengthening their bond as one of Hollywood's most enduring couples, they welcomed their first child together this year: Harold Ralph Gerwig. Gerwig told Vogue that she "gave him all the names."
Gerwig and baby Harold shared the cover of Vogue.
Talk about making a debut. On the cover of Vogue's December 2019 issue, Gerwig cradles Harold, then six months old.
Gerwig kept her pregnancy secret during the filming of Little Women in Concord, MA. To Gerwig, there's definite overlap between having a child and making a movie: "That feeling of forever being underqualified and kind of awed by the thing."
They're engaged, but don't have a wedding date planned.
In an interview on The Late Late Show with James Cordon, the couple revealed that they call themselves husband and wife, even though a wedding has not officially taken place.
"'Boyfriend' makes it sound like I just met him last week. 'Lover' is disgusting. And 'fiancé' makes it sound like there's an imminent wedding. So none if it works," Gerwig said, laughing, of the various titles for Baumbach.
They're going head-to-head at the 2020 Oscars.
Gerwig and Baumbach really are the golden couple. Their 2019 films, Little Women and Marriage Story, both received six Oscar noms. While neither was nominated for directing, they both were commended for their screenplays.
However, they won't be competing directly against each other in the writing categories. Gerwig was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, and Baumbach, for Best Original Screenplay.
From what we know of Gerwig and Baumbach, they'll be rooting for each other the whole night through.
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DeAnna Janes is a freelance writer and editor for a number of sites, including Harper’s BAZAAR, Tasting Table, Fast Company and Brit + Co, and is a passionate supporter of animal causes, copy savant, movie dork and reckless connoisseur of all holidays. A native Texan living in NYC since 2005, Janes has a degree in journalism from Texas A&M and got her start in media at US Weekly before moving on to O Magazine, and eventually becoming the entertainment editor of the once-loved, now-shuttered DailyCandy. She’s based on the Upper West Side.
