Noah Baumbach Bio
Noah Baumbach (born September 3, 1969) is an American filmmaker, writer, and director. He is known for making light comedies and dramas set in New York City, and his works are inspired by filmmakers such as Woody Allen and Whit Stillman. His frequent collaborators include Wes Anderson, Adam Driver, and his wife, Greta Gerwig. Over his career, Baumbach has earned four Academy Award nominations, a Critics’ Choice Award, two Independent Spirit Awards, and three Gotham Awards, along with nominations for two BAFTA Awards and two Golden Globe Awards.
Early Life and Background
Noah Baumbach was born on September 3, 1969, in Brooklyn, New York City, into a family with Jewish roots. He grew up in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, where he decided at a young age that he wanted to become a professional filmmaker. His father, Jonathan Baumbach, was an author of experimental fiction and the co-founder of the publishing house Fiction Collective. Jonathan also taught at Stanford University and Brooklyn College, and worked as a film critic for Partisan Review. His mother, Georgia Brown, was a film critic for The Village Voice and also wrote fiction.
Baumbach’s parents divorced during his adolescence, and that family experience later served as direct inspiration for his 2005 film The Squid and the Whale. He has three siblings, two of whom are from his father’s previous marriage. Films that influenced him during his early years include The Jerk, Animal House, Heaven Can Wait, The World According to Garp, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Baumbach graduated from Brooklyn’s Midwood High School in 1987 and went on to receive his A.B. in English from Vassar College in 1991. While at Vassar, he roomed with fellow student Jason Blum, who later produced Baumbach’s first film. Soon after college, Baumbach briefly worked as a messenger at The New Yorker magazine before fully turning to filmmaking.
Path to Filmmaking
Baumbach made his writing and directing debut in 1995 with Kicking and Screaming, a comedy about four young men who graduate from college and refuse to move on with their lives. The film starred Josh Hamilton, Chris Eigeman, and Carlos Jacott, and it premiered at the New York Film Festival in 1995. Newsweek named Baumbach one of its “Ten New Faces of 1996,” and critic Roger Ebert praised the film’s dialogue and observation of young adult life. Janet Maslin of The New York Times also called attention to the picture’s confident comic style.
In 1997, Baumbach wrote and directed Mr. Jealousy, a comedy about a young writer so jealous of his girlfriend that he sneaks into the group therapy sessions of her ex-boyfriend. He also co-wrote and directed the New York-set comedy of manners Highball, though Baumbach later disowned that film in interviews, calling it an unfinished experiment that was released on DVD without his approval. These early independent efforts helped him build a name on the New York festival circuit and led to his first major studio collaboration.
Noah Baumbach Career
Early Career (1995–2004)
Baumbach’s first widely seen works were Kicking and Screaming (1995) and Mr. Jealousy (1997), both modest independent comedies that earned him critical notice on the festival circuit. In 2004, he moved into larger productions when he collaborated with Wes Anderson to co-write The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, an offbeat adventure comedy. Working with Anderson gave Baumbach experience writing for established casts and broader audiences, and it set the stage for his next project as a director.
Breakthrough (2005–2009)
In 2005, Baumbach released The Squid and the Whale, a semi-autobiographical comedy-drama about his childhood in Brooklyn and the effect of his parents’ divorce in the mid-1980s. The film starred Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney as the parents, and it won two awards at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. It also earned Baumbach his first Academy Award nomination, for Best Original Screenplay, along with six Independent Spirit Award nominations, three Golden Globe nominations, and best screenplay honors from the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the National Board of Review.
Baumbach followed that success with the 2007 dramedy Margot at the Wedding, starring his then wife Jennifer Jason Leigh, along with Nicole Kidman, Jack Black, and John Turturro. In 2008, he co-wrote and co-directed short films for Saturday Night Live with cast members Fred Armisen and Bill Hader. In 2009, he reunited with Wes Anderson to co-write the stop-motion animated film Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was a critical success and earned Academy Award, BAFTA, and Golden Globe nominations for Best Animated Film.
Notable Works and Milestones
Baumbach’s signature works include The Squid and the Whale (2005), Marriage Story (2019), and Barbie (2023), the last of which he co-wrote with Greta Gerwig and which grossed $1.4 billion worldwide. In 2025, he was awarded the Telluride Film Festival Silver Medallion in recognition of his body of work.
Noah Baumbach Award Nominations
Over his career, Noah Baumbach has received nominations from the Academy Awards, the Golden Globe Awards, the British Academy Film Awards, the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards, the Cannes Film Festival, the Venice Film Festival, and the Writers Guild of America Awards. He has earned four Academy Award nominations across three films, along with multiple Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for his screenplays and adapted works.
Noah Baumbach Awards Won
Baumbach has won a Critics’ Choice Award, two Independent Spirit Awards, and three Gotham Awards across his career. For The Squid and the Whale, he received two awards at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and best screenplay honors from the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the National Board of Review. For Marriage Story, he swept the “Big Four” critics awards for screenplay, taking honors from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the National Board of Review, the New York Film Critics Circle, and the National Society of Film Critics. In 2025, he was awarded the Telluride Film Festival Silver Medallion.
Noah Baumbach Family
Noah Baumbach was born to author Jonathan Baumbach and film critic Georgia Brown, and his parents’ divorce during his adolescence became the emotional core of The Squid and the Whale. His brother Nico Baumbach is a film theorist and associate professor at Columbia University’s Center for Comparative Media, and he is married to Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Annie Baker. Baumbach has three siblings, two of whom are from his father’s previous marriage.
Personal Life
Baumbach met actress Jennifer Jason Leigh in 2001 while she was starring on Broadway in Proof, and the couple married on September 2, 2005. They have a son named Rohmer, born in 2010 and named after French director Éric Rohmer. Leigh filed for divorce on November 15, 2010, citing irreconcilable differences, and the divorce was finalized in September 2013.
Baumbach’s romantic and creative partnership with actress, writer, and director Greta Gerwig began in late 2011, after they met during the production of Greenberg. They have two sons together, born in March 2019 and February 2023. In December 2023, Baumbach and Gerwig married at New York City Hall, twelve years into their relationship.