Greta Gerwig Was Rejected By Every Playwriting Program She Applied To

Greta Gerwig has become the first woman to receive an Oscar nomination for her directorial debut, with Lady Bird. However, CNBC reports that her life didn't always go the way she had hoped or planned.

"I got rejected from every graduate school I applied to," she told Catie Lazarus during her "Employee of the Month" podcast in 2016. "I really thought highly of myself. I applied as a playwright to Yale, Juilliard and NYU and just got like a universal, 'No thanks.'"

Gerwig told Lazarus that she went back and read the play she had submitted and "still thought it was pretty good."

However, the rejections ended up being a blessing in disguise for Gerwig, as they led her to begin acting, which gave her the skills necessary to be a successful director.

She told Jimmy Fallon that she had always wanted to be a writer-director but because she wsn't accepted to film school, she taught herself on set.

"When I was acting or co-writing or producing I was figuring out how you get a movie from page to it being released," she said.

Read more here.

Lady Bird is a 2017 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Greta Gerwiga nd starring Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, Timothée Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Lois Smith. Set in Sacramento, California in 2002-03, it is a coming-of-age story of a high-school senior (Ronan) and her turbulent relationship with her mother (Metcalf).

Photo Credit: Walter McBride

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