He is known for making light comedies set in New York City and his works are inspired by filmmakers such as Woody Allen and Whit Stillman.

[3] Baumbach grew up in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and from a young age he was determined to become a professional filmmaker.

[2][6] Films that influenced Baumbach include The Jerk, Animal House, Heaven Can Wait, The World According To Garp, E.T.

[2] Baumbach made his writing and directing debut in 1995 with Kicking and Screaming, a comedy about four young men who graduate from college and refuse to move on with their lives.

Roger Ebert praised the film's "good eye and a terrific ear; the dialogue by writer-director Noah Baumbach is not simply accurate... but a distillation of reality – elevating aimless brainy small-talk into a statement.

Janet Maslin of The New York Times stated, "Kicking and Screaming occupies its postage-stamp size terrain with confident comic style.

"[13] In 1997, he wrote and directed Mr. Jealousy, a film about a young writer so jealous about his girlfriend that he sneaks into the group therapy sessions of her ex-boyfriend to discover what kind of relationship they had.

The following year, he released his fourth feature film, The Squid and the Whale (2005) which was a semi-autobiographical comedy-drama about his childhood in Brooklyn and the effect of his parents' divorce on the family in the mid-1980s.

Baumbach wrote and directed the 2007 dramedy Margot at the Wedding, starring his then wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nicole Kidman, Jack Black, and John Turturro.

[16] Baumbach co-wrote the screenplay for the 2009 film version of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox with Wes Anderson, who directed it using stop-motion technology.

[18] In 2012, Baumbach directed the comedic drama Frances Ha, which he cowrote with Greta Gerwig, who also starred.

[21] CBS News compared Frances Ha's style to the works of Woody Allen, Jim Jarmusch and François Truffaut.

[28][29] Baumbach wrote and directed the 2014 comedy-drama While We're Young, starring Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried.

[30] He also directed and cowrote the 2015 comedy Mistress America, starring Greta Gerwig and Lola Kirke.

[32][33] The film focuses on a fractured and dysfunctional family, and starred Dustin Hoffman, Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler and Emma Thompson.

The website's critical consensus reads, "The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) observes the family dynamic through writer-director Noah Baumbach's bittersweet lens and the impressive efforts of a remarkable cast.

"[35] On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating, the film has a weighted average score of 79 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

It premiered to great acclaim at the Venice Film Festival, before it was released on Netflix on November 6, 2019,[37] with many ranking it among Baumbach's best work.

In 2023, Baumbach again collaborated with Gerwig, co-writing the screenplay for her film Barbie starring Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, and America Ferrera.

[47] He has also cited Ernst Lubitsch, Max Ophüls, Jean Renoir, Robert Altman, Peter Bogdanovich, Spike Lee, Whit Stillman, Steven Spielberg, as well as the screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s, and the films of the French New Wave as influences.

[51] Baumbach is a fan of the "beautiful" music of electronic acts New Order and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), and sought to "do something that evoked" those bands on the soundtrack of Mistress America (2015).

[52][53] He has also cited David Bowie and Paul McCartney, and the film scores of Tangerine Dream and Georges Delerue, as important to him.

[54] Leigh filed for divorce from Baumbach on November 15, 2010, in Los Angeles, citing irreconcilable differences.

[55] Baumbach's romantic and creative collaboration with actress, writer and director Greta Gerwig began late in 2011, after they met during the production of Greenberg.

[58][59][60] Twelve years into their relationship, Baumbach and Gerwig married at New York City Hall in December 2023.

[61] Baumbach's brother Nico is a film theorist and associate professor at Columbia University's Center for Comparative Media.

[62][63] Executive producer Acting roles Baumbach has been nominated for four Academy Awards for the films The Squid and the Whale (2005), Marriage Story (2019), and Barbie (2023).