It should come as no surprise that Laurie Simmons is proud of her daughter Lena Dunham. The 31-year-old wrote, directed, produced and starred in HBO’s groundbreaking series Girls. And at age 25 she picked up an Independent Spirit Award for her semi-autobiographical film Tiny Furniture.
“My daughter is super-resilient. My daughter is brilliant,” the photographer told Us Weekly at a Planned Parenthood event in NYC earlier this month. Simmons, 68, then referenced the hysterectomy Dunham underwent last fall after a decade-long struggle with endometriosis.
“The last few years have been about her health and getting her better so she could kick ass again because she’s an activist,” Simmons said. She added that the Not That Kind of Girl author is feeling “pretty good” and moving “in the right direction.”
Last month, Dunham Instagrammed a picture Laurie had taken of her. In the shot, it appears as though the actress is wearing a striped shirt and black pants, but it’s actually body paint. She joked about her mother in the post’s caption: “I learned more about her when she took a picture of me than I have in 25 years of therapy.”
Simmons says that Dunham “begged” to be featured in her new exhibition at Manhattan gallery Salon 94. “I said, ‘No, I’m not doing it for the exhibition,’” she recalled to Us. “The photos were portraits of people that were sort of new to me and she said, ‘But my health is new, my good health is something new.’ I said, ‘Sold!’”
