Noah Baumbach Biography

Noah Baumbach is a film writer and director who is best known for his independently made films The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding and Marriage Story.

His screenplays for The Squid and the Whale and Marriage Story both earned Oscar nominations, and Marriage Story was a contender for best motion picture of the year in 2020.

Baumbach is a New Yorker whose parents were writers, and after graduating from Vassar College in 1991, he started his filmmaking career.

His first feature was Kicking and Screaming (1995), but it was the autobiographical divorce drama The Squid and the Whale that made Baumbach nationally known ten years later.

Since then, he’s had a steady career as a filmmaker who also works occasionally on other screenplays, including working with Wes Anderson by providing the scripts for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) and Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009).

Baumbach’s films are character-driven vehicles that speak to something profound in his fans, or they are simply a bunch of white people talking — Woody Allen without the jokes — to his critics.

Besides Margot at the Wedding (2007, starring Nicole Kidman), his films include Frances Ha (2010, with Greta Gerwig), Greenberg (2010, starring Ben Stiller), While We’re Young (2014, with Stiller and Naomi Watts), Mistress America (2014, with Gerwig) and The Meyerwitz Stories (New and Selected) 2017).

Baumbach also did re-writes for the screenplay to Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted (2012).