Lena Dunham (/ˈliːnə ˈdʌnəm/; born May 13, 1986) is an American actress, writer, producer, and director. She is best known as the creator, writer, and star of the HBO series Girls (2012–2017), for which she has received a number of Emmy Award nominations, and two Golden Globe Awards. Dunham also directed several episodes of Girls and became the first woman to win the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Comedy Series. Prior to Girls, Dunham wrote, directed, and starred in the semi-autobiographical independent film Tiny Furniture (2010), for which she won an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay.\n', '

In 2013, Dunham was included in the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. In 2014, Dunham released her first book, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She\'s "Learned". In 2015, along with close friend and Girls showrunner Jenni Konner, Dunham created the publication Lenny Letter, a feminist online newsletter.\n', '

Dunham was born in New York City. Her father, Carroll Dunham, is a painter, and her mother, Laurie Simmons, is an artist and photographer, and a member of The Pictures Generation, known for her use of dolls and dollhouse furniture in her photographs of setup interior scenes. Her father is Protestant of mostly English ancestry, and her mother is Jewish; Dunham has described herself as feeling "very culturally Jewish, although that\'s the biggest cliché for a Jewish woman to say." The Dunham family are cousins of the Tiffany family, prominent in the jewelry trade.\n', '

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