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Lena Dunham may quit acting; rails against women getting typecast

Lena Dunham speaks at the 2014 SXSW Music, Film + Interactive Festival at the Austin Convention Center.
(Michael Buckner / Getty Images for SXSW)
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Perhaps we’ll be seeing less of Lena Dunham on screen in the future: The “Girls” talent says she might consider quitting acting to focus on some of her other work.

But don’t worry, she’s not going far.

“I don’t know if I’m going to want to act anymore. I’m always relieved on the days I don’t have to. I’d rather give parts to other women than be the woman having the parts,” the Golden Globe-winning 27-year-old said in the April issue of Glamour, which hits newsstands March 18.

Appearing in the critically acclaimed HBO series about four 20-something women growing up in New York isn’t the only thing on her plate. She created, writes and directs the series, which aired its Season 3 finale on Sunday. The frequently nude actress is also dating fun. musician Jack Antonoff, who has given her perspective on her career and, she said, came into her life during a major turning point.

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“[Before Jack] I was all tortured about whether I should get back together with this guy I’d been seeing for five months,” she told the mag. “We’d broken up, and it felt like my only chance at romance for the rest of my life. But Nora [Ephron] was like, ‘No, no, no.’ So I broke up with him in January, ‘Girls’ debuted at the beginning of April, and then I met Jack at the end of April.

“The dialogue around the show already existed, so it was sort of clear to him what the baggage of dating me was going to be. I remember talking with him on our first date and him being like, ‘God, all the articles about your nudity on the show are such ... .’ It’s funny, ‘cause in some ways that’s the conversation we still have when I’m upset [about stuff I read].”

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Not surprisingly, Glamour’s cover line is “Girls’ Lena Dunham: Why she’s OVER talking about her body.”

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And why shouldn’t she be, given all the new projects she’s undertaken lately? She released a book of personal essays titled “Not That Kind of Girl,” will pen a forthcoming issue of the “Archie” comic and will appear in Joe Swanberg’s film “Happy Christmas,” which premiered at Sundance in January.

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Dunham also just wrapped a hosting stint on “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend -- a gig that garnered various shades of Twitter rage because of an off-color tweet she posted about her “Adam and Eve” sketch on the show, which overlaid a “Girls” attitude on the biblical story.

A fan tweeted at the starlet for baring it all, saying, “you don’t always have to get naked!” according to Us Weekly, and Dunham quipped back, “Please tell that to my uncle, mister. He’s been making me!”

She quickly removed the barb and followed up with a series of apologies.

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“I just made and deleted a not so great molestation joke. Sorry guys. I am really sleepy,” she wrote, adding, “SNL has a way bigger audience than our usual cozy girls audience, so I was seeing a rash of very different kinds of twitter rage ... But I should know better, and do. Even naked girls get embarrassed. Sleep well and thanks for an amazing weekend.”

It isn’t the first time Dunham has taken to Twitter to address issues. The outspoken celeb is no stranger to controversy, constantly taking to social media to call out her critics or say mea culpa. Earlier this year, she dealt with haters head-on when unretouched photos of her Vogue spread leaked online, and she frequently rails about sexism, touts feminism and makes quirky yet enlightened observations about the world around her.

Which brings us back to the whole acting thing: On Monday, the “Tiny Furniture” star returned to SXSW in Austin to deliver one of the festival’s keynote addresses, in which she spoke about Hollywood sexism, Variety reported.

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“It’s a rough scene,” she said (via IndieWire). “It’s hard to always offer comforting words on that topic. I think about this in relation to the cast on my show, which consists of three very talented women and also some very talented guys. Our male lead, Adam Driver, has had a bang-up year in movies which could not be more deserved.... But the girls are still waiting patiently for parts that are going to honor their intelligence and their ability.

“The world is ready to see Adam as a million different men -- playing good guys and bad guys and sweet guys and scary guys. The world is ready to see Adam do all that. It’s not ready to see Allison Williams, Zosia Mamet or Jemima Kirke stretch their legs in the same variety of diverse roles. ... And this is not a knock on Adam’s talent.... It’s a knock on a world where women are typecast and men can play villains, Lotharios and nerds in one calendar year and something has to change and I’m trying.”

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