Not That Kind of Girl (Dunham) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—May 13, 1986
• Where—New York City (Brooklyn), New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Oberlin College
• Awards—Golden Globe Awards (twice); Directors Guild Award
• Currently—New York City (Brooklyn), New York

Lena Dunham is an American actress, screenwriter, producer, and director. She wrote and directed the independent film Tiny Furniture (2010), and is the creator, writer and star of the HBO series Girls. She has received eight nominations for Emmy Awards as a writer, director, actress and producer and won two Golden Globe Awards for Girls. Dunham is also the first woman to win a Directors Guild Award for Outstanding Director in a Comedy Series.

Background
Dunham was born in New York City, New York. Her father, Carroll Dunham, is a painter, and her mother, Laurie Simmons, is an artist and photographer, and a member of the Pictures group. Laurie is known for her use of dolls and doll-house furniture in her photographs of setup interior scenes. Dunham has described herself as feeling "very culturally Jewish, although that’s the biggest cliche for a Jewish woman to say”; her father is Protestant, and her mother is Jewish.

She has a younger sister, Grace, a 2014 graduate of Brown University, who appeared in Dunham's first film, Creative Nonfiction, and starred in her second film, Tiny Furniture.

Dunham was raised in Brooklyn and spent her summers in a house in Salisbury, Connecticut, though her parents later purchased a weekend family home in Cornwall, Connecticut.

Dunham attended Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn, where she met Tiny Furniture actress and Girls co-star Jemima Kirke. She graduated in 2008 from Oberlin College, where she studied creative writing. During her college years, Dunham worked part-time at the West Village boutique Geminola.

Career
Dunham's 2010 feature film Tiny Furniture won Best Narrative Feature at South by Southwest Music and Media Conference, and subsequently screened at such festivals as Maryland Film Festival. Dunham herself plays the lead role of Aura. Her real life mother plays Aura's mother, while her real sister, Grace, plays Aura's on-screen sibling.

In early 2012, HBO gave the go-ahead to Dunham's television series Girls. The first season premiered in April, 2012, and has garnered Dunham four Emmy nominations for her roles in acting, writing, and directing the series and two Golden Globe wins for Best Comedy Series for Girls and for herself in Best Lead Actress in a Comedy or Musical Series. In February 2013, Dunham became the first woman to win a Directors Guild Award for Outstanding Director in a Comedy Series for her work on Girls.

Dunham appeared in a video advertisement promoting President Barack Obama's re-election, delivering a monologue, which, according to a blog quoted in The Atlantic, tried to "get the youth vote by comparing voting for the first time to having sex for the first time". Fox News reported "intense criticism" from multiple media sources, who labeled the advertisement as "tasteless and inappropriate," but added that "not everyone was so offended". In 2014, she was named the Recipient of Horizon Award 2014 by Point Foundation for her support to the gay community.

In 2014 Dunham published a collection of personal essays, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned." She dedicated the book to Nora Ephron, a friend.

Personal life
In 2012, Dunham began dating Jack Antonoff, lead guitarist of the band Fun. She has stated that she will not get married until same-sex marriage is legalized.

Dunham was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder as a child, and continues to take a low dose of an antidepressant to relieve her anxiety. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/4/2014.)