Noah Baumbach () (born September 3, 1969) is an American film director and screenwriter. He is known for making witty and intellectual comedies set in New York City and has often been compared to writer-directors such as Woody Allen and Whit Stillman. His frequent collaborators include Greta Gerwig, Adam Driver, and Wes Anderson. Baumbach gained attention for his early films Kicking and Screaming (1995), and Mr. Jealousy (1997). His breakthrough film The Squid and the Whale (2005) earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He started his long time collaborations with his partner Greta Gerwig with Greenberg (2010), and continued with Frances Ha (2013), Mistress America (2015), and White Noise (2022). His other films include Margot at the Wedding (2007), While We're Young (2014), and The Meyerowitz Stories (2017). His film Marriage Story (2019) earned an Academy Award for Best Picture nomination and Baumbach's second Best Original Screenplay nomination. He is also known for co-writing, with Wes Anderson, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) and Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009). Early life and education Baumbach was born on September 3, 1969 in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Jonathan Baumbach, was an author of experimental fiction and the co-founder of the publishing house Fiction Collective, taught at Stanford University and Brooklyn College, and was a film critic for Partisan Review. His mother, Georgia Brown, was a film critic for The Village Voice who also wrote fiction. His father was Jewish; his mother is Protestant. His parents divorced during his adolescence, which served as inspiration for his 2005 film The Squid and the Whale. Baumbach has three siblings, two of whom are from a previous marriage of his father's. Baumbach grew up in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and was determined to become a filmmaker from a young age. Films that influenced Baumbach include The Jerk, Animal House, Heaven Can Wait, The World According To Garp, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. He graduated from Brooklyn's Midwood High School in 1987 and received his BA in English from Vassar College in 1991. While at Vassar, he and fellow future filmmaker, Jason Blum, were roommates (Blum would later produce Baumbach's first film, Kicking and Screaming in 1995). Soon after, he briefly worked as a messenger at The New Yorker. Career 1990s Baumbach made his writing and directing debut in 1995 with Kicking and Screaming, a comedy about