LEADING BY EXAMPLE

GRETA GERWIG IS STANDING AT A corner in Chinatown, trying to figure out the way to Brooklyn. She’s spent nearly half her life in New York City, but we’re at that point in lower Manhattan where the grid devolves into a patchwork maze. After lunch in the West Village, she suggested—on this frigid February day, with flurries swirling about and a doggie bag of half-eaten pasta Bolognese in her backpack—that we trek across the island, and then a bridge, before she heads to pedestrianaverse Los Angeles the next day. Gerwig likes to walk, often as a remedy for writer’s block. It’s when you’re walking, she insists, that life happens to you.

Much has been happening to Gerwig lately. After a decade spent in front of the camera, she released her solo-directorial debut, Lady Bird, last fall. The film has since been nominated for five Oscars, including Best Director. This shouldn’t be any more noteworthy than another film’s success, but it is—women behind the camera rarely get mainstream recognition for their work. The nod makes Gerwig just the fifth woman nominated for directing in 90 years of Academy Awards—and the first female nominee since Kathryn Bigelow became the only woman to win, for The Hurt Locker in 2010.

That Gerwig, 34, did it with Lady Bird—which shares some DNA with her Sacramento upbringing—is remarkable, not just because it took half a decade to make and twice as long to find the courage. Its story—about