Q & ASix Seconds With...

Lena Dunham is the new Woody AllenHip humor gets a facelift from the most sought-after cynic in the business

By Ashley Edwards Walker

Photo: Dr. Billy Ingram/WireImage

"Woody is the man," Dunham has said. "He's [my] Madonna."

Who's that neurotic writer/director/actor fixated on NYC, therapists and sex? Move over, Woody Allen. Lena Dunham may steal your misanthropic thunder.

The 25-year-old brunette wit ventures, in the trailer of her hotly anticipated HBO show, Girls, out April 15, "I may be the voice of my generation." She then quickly backpedals: "Or at least a voice of a generation."

Like Allen's tableaux of 1970s New York in Annie Hall and Manhattan, Dunham's Girls (she writes, directs, stars and co-exec produces with Judd Apatow) is a sardonic take on the dilemmas of life in the city.

Susannah Gora, senior programmer for The Friars Club Comedy Film Festival-which in 2010 screened Dunham's award-winning indie film Tiny Furniture-describes the comedian's work as "[What] a young Woody Allen might have come up with, if he had ovaries and a Twitter account."

Dunham indeed boasts both, along with a scathing sense of humor that, like Allen's, frequently targets her hometown-and her own foibles.

"I feel like I brought my desire to share my shame with the world," she quipped at a January Television Critics Association panel. "It's something I've been discussing with my therapist."

Lena Dunham

Age, 25, Hometown: Manhattan

THE LOOK: A few tattoos, including two "prison style" inks carved by Girls costar Jemima Kirke

LIFE IMITATING ART: "I wrote it, I directed it, I star in it; if you don't like the movie, you don't like me," she told The L.A. Times of her autobiographical film Tiny Furniture.

CASTING COUCH: Dunham cast her mother, sister and childhood pal to play her mother, sister and childhood pal in Tiny Furniture.

LOVE LINES: "I am a little bit of a sad sack when it comes to romance," she told The NY Times.

Woody Allen

Age, 76, Hometown: Brooklyn

THE LOOK: Rumpled chinos (he avoids changing), pullover sweater and dark-rimmed glasses

LIFE IMITATING ART:"People always look for clues [about me] in my movies no matter how many times I've told them over the years I make this stuff up," he has said.

CASTING COUCH: Allen cast real-life love interests Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow to play fictional amours in many of his films.

LOVE LINES: "Don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone I love," Allen quipped in Annie Hall.