Lena Dunham Reveals All

Canceled too many times to count.

In her new memoir, Famesick, the actor-writer-director revisits the awful men (Jack Antonoff, Adam Driver), the difficult women (her business partner, her mother), and the social-media flaying that almost destroyed her

By Emma Brockes

If there is something to be learned from the words people pick for their passwords and proxies, then Lena Dunham’s choice of aliases – pseudonyms that, as a public person, she has used over the years to conceal her identity when checking into rehab or ordering room service – give us a tiny glimpse into the writer and director’s self-image. Among her staples, “Lauri Reynolds” (after her mum, Laurie, with whom she is strikingly close); “Rose O’Neill” (after the American millionaire illustrator, who lost her fortune to burnout and hangers-on); and my favorite, “Renata Halpern”, an alias Dunham shares with readers of her delicious new memoir, READ ON