She's an alter-ego maniac

Actor and writer Greta Gerwig channels her characters “from the inside out”

By Erica Phillips
Published: November 14th, 2008 | 4:50pm

The first 25 years of Greta Gerwig’s life followed a course eerily similar to that of one of her own personal lady-heroes, Joan Didion. Both women grew up in Sacramento, California, and moved to New York at a young age where they pursued a passion for true-to-life writing and the creative “buzz” of the city. Gerwig, however, has augmented the literary path with theatrical pursuits on stage and screen, earning recognition among Internet-indie-film fans for her role as Hannah in the mumblecore hit, Hannah Takes the Stairs in 2007.

After her latest film, Nights and Weekends, screened at the Chicago International Film Festival, Venus Zine got to chat with Greta about her varied projects and where her acting and writing fit in the spectrum of film genres.

What’s going on with you these days?
I’m finishing up editing a Web show I just shot last month called Gerta gets a Boyfriend and it’s about my alter-ego, Gerta, who is in a destructive-in-all-ways relationship. I’m finishing up the editing for that and finishing a script with Alison Bagnall. I’ve been writing with her for the past almost eight months now. It doesn’t quite have a title yet. I think it might be called Big Furry.

So Gerta is sort of your alter-ego. How often is it that the person you’re portraying is a version of yourself, and how close does it come to being your actual self on the big screen?
I’m not an outside-in actor, I’m an inside-out actor. So, even when there’s a script that’s given to me, I tend to bring the role to myself and not myself to the role. I try to find the things in myself that are like this and sort of exaggerate it. Even if it’s pretend, the concept of your self expands when you go through the motions of pretending to be [someone else]. Does that make sense?

So instead of saying, like, here’s Greta and she’s this static thing that is this way, “Greta” expands to include these other parts of her self. I guess Hannah is close to how I behave when I’m behaving badly, and you know Nights and Weekends is close to how I behave when I’m fighting with someone in a relationship. But it’s not how I am every day, thankfully.

How long were you focused in theater and what effect has that had on your work in film?
In high school I wanted to be a musical theater star [laughs] but I didn’t have a very good singing voice so that never really panned out. I grew up in Sacramento, California, and musical theater was the only theater that they would allow kids to do, but it was wonderful. I love musical theater, I still do. I think it’s such a sincere art form. It’s people standing and singing what they feel. What could be more sincere than that?

...I started approaching theater from writing. I was very lucky, there were a lot of very good writing professors who would come from Juilliard, which has a fabulous playwriting program. These playwrights who were working at Juilliard, they were the first people who sort of said, “You know, you’re pretty good at this.”

This was at Barnard, right? What was it like going to a women’s college?
The women who come out of there are amazing. And living in New York — the best advertisement for the school is the fact that pretty much every cool older woman who’s doing something interesting, who you meet in New York, went to Barnard. Like, they all did. And they’re all crazy, they’re all just like complete nut-heads, but they’re all they’re wonderful.

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Greta’s Heroines

Julia Jordan, playwright
GG says: “She’s amazing.”

Twyla Tharp, choreographer and director
GG says: “Perfect.”

Caryl Churchill, playwright
GG says: “I really admire [her].”

Rosalind Russell, actor
GG says: “She was amazing in His Girl Friday.”

Maria Dizzia, actor
GG says: “Pretty spectacular.”

Rosemarie DeWitt, actor
GG says: “I think she’s great.”

Joan Didion, writer
GG says: “Wonderful.”

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Check out Gerwig’s work at NightsandWeekendsMovie.com and HannahTakestheStairs.com.