Shamed by the comparisons: the one actor Greta Gerwig said was in their own category
Any actor or filmmaker who either bursts onto the scene or takes the industry by storm will inevitably earn comparisons to at least one person who blazed that trail before them, but Greta Gerwig wasn’t having any of it.
Beginning her career as an actor, Gerwig quickly became known as one of the figureheads of the mumblecore movement, but there’s only so long any creative can work under the same guidelines over and over until they feel compelled to try something radically different.
She got her feet wet behind the camera by co-directing 2008’s Nights and Weekends alongside Joe Swanberg, which kept the mumblecore flag flying by enlisting peers like Jay Duplass and Lynn Shelton for the cast. It was a start, though, even if evolution was always at the forefront of her thinking.
Her scripts for Northern Comfort, Frances Ha, and Mistress America continued Gerwig’s trajectory as one of mumblecore’s most famous faces on either side of the camera, but when she flew solo and helmed Lady Bird on her lonesome it was clear that she wouldn’t be hanging around the low budget independent scene for long, whether she wanted to or not.
Period-set literary adaptation Little Women was another change of pace before Barbie became a cultural juggernaut that shattered expectations and saw Gerwig set countless benchmarks and break multiple records that no other female auteur had ever accomplished.
All three of her features have been nominated for ‘Best Picture’ and she’s been nominated for her writing on all of them, and with Gerwig not having played a substantial onscreen part in a wide theatrical release since 2016’s 20th Century Women, it would be fair to say she’s much more of a filmmaker than an actor these days.
However, more than a decade ago, her claim to fame was being anointed as the ‘Meryl Streep of mumblecore’, a comparison that actively caused her shame and embarrassment. As far as Gerwig is concerned, there’s only one Streep, and she’s about as untouchable as it gets.
“It’s shameful that I’m known as the Meryl Streep of anything,” she told Complex. “I don’t think you can. Meryl Streep is not a term that can be just bandied out like it doesn’t mean anything. Meryl’s in her own category.”
Gerwig would hardly be the first to worship the ground Streep walks on, and neither was she the first to be left indignant at the iconic actor being named as somebody she was even capable of emulating. The 21-time Oscar nominee exists on a pedestal all to herself, having evolved into such an icon and inspiration that she’s fast approaching deified status if she hasn’t already.
On the plus side, now that she’s blazing her own trail as a writer and director, Gerwig most likely won’t have to hear it anymore.
