The roles Greta Gerwig only played for the money: “Those movies saved my fucking life”
These days, Greta Gerwig is mostly known for being one of the most successful directors of her generation.
After scoring Oscar nominations for 2017’s indie hit Lady Bird and 2019’s star-studded Little Women, she struck gold at the box office with 2023’s Barbie, which became the only movie from a solo female director to surpass $1 billion. More impressively, she managed to smack down Christopher Nolan in ticket sales, a feat that even Martin Scorsese couldn’t do.
But before that torrent of directorial glory, Gerwig spent a decade as an actor in that most indie of indie genres, mumblecore. Nobody makes a movie like Baghead for the money, but even artists have to eat, and in 2010, Gerwig found herself in an untenable situation. She’d made a handful of movies with Joe Swanberg, but the money was sparse, and she was struggling to make ends meet. It was in this shaky state of affairs that she decided to accept roles in two major studio films – No Strings Attached and Arthur.
The former stars Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher as acquaintances who agree to have sex without catching feelings. You’ll never guess what happens. Gerwig plays Patrice, a friend and fellow doctor to Portman’s character, who has an even worse dating history.
The latter film deserves even less attention, but since it played an integral part in Gerwig’s career, we must, unfortunately, acknowledge its existence. It was a remake of the 1981 movie of the same name and stars future conspiracy theorist and YouTube hack Russell Brand as a rich dickhead. Gerwig played his love interest, and no matter how much she was paid for the work, it was absolutely not enough.
Still, the future Hollywood mogul saw those films as her saving grace. She was on the brink of mainstream stardom with the release of the Noah Baumbach film Greenberg, but on the night of the premiere, she was still so strapped for cash that she didn’t have a place to stay. As far as she’s concerned, the sudden offers to work on No Strings Attached and Arthur were nothing short of miraculous.
“I don’t care if people don’t like those movies,” she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016. “Those movies saved my fucking life.”
Luckily, she didn’t have to become a full-time sell-out. Greenberg was a success and kicked off her long-running collaboration with Baumbach, who she eventually married. Frances Ha and Mistress America followed, and before she could get sucked into another cinematic atrocity on par with Arthur, Gerwig was starring in auteur-driven awards fodder like 20th Century Women and Jackie.
You could see this rapid turn of events as the type of fluke that sets the trajectory of most movie stars, but Gerwig deserves more credit. No Strings Attached and Arthur might have fallen into her lap at just the right time, but it speaks to her artistic integrity that she chose to stick with indie movies after that instead of continuing to climb the ladder of easy money and mainstream success. The fact that she went from niche indie movies to Oscar-y indie movies is as much a testament to her foresight and restraint as to her acting skills.
