AManic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) is astock character type in fiction, usually depicted as a young woman with eccentric personality quirks who serves as the romantic interest for a male protagonist. The term was coined in 2007 by film criticNathan Rabin after observingKirsten Dunst's character inElizabethtown (2005). Rabin criticized the type as one-dimensional, existing only to provide emotional support to the protagonist, or to teach him important life lessons, while receiving nothing in return. The term has since entered the general vernacular.[1][2]
Film criticNathan Rabin coined the term in 2007 in his review of the 2005 filmElizabethtown forThe A.V. Club. In discussingKirsten Dunst's character, he said "Dunst embodies a character type I like to call The Manic Pixie Dream Girl", a character who "exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures." Rabin also namesNatalie Portman's character inGarden State as another prime example of the MPDG.[3]
In 2008, a year after Rabin coined the term,The A.V. Club ran a piece listing 16 characters they deemed MPDGs, which includedKatharine Hepburn's character inBringing Up Baby (1938) as one of the earliest examples of the archetype. Others in the list includedGoldie Hawn's character, Jill, inButterflies Are Free; andWinona Ryder's character inAutumn in New York.[4] The new term was used by media outlets such asNational Public Radio andJezebel.[5]
Critic Jimmy Maher ofThe Digital Antiquarian wrote about the character Clarisse in the 1953Ray Bradbury novelFahrenheit 451: "Bradbury has been credited, with some truth, with foreshadowing or even inspiring everything from 24-hour news as entertainment to theSony Walkman in Fahrenheit 451. I've never, however, seen him properly credited for his most insidious creation: the Manic Pixie Dream Girl."[6] Holly Golightly inBreakfast at Tiffany's, played byAudrey Hepburn in the 1961 film, is an example of a vintage Manic Pixie Dream Girl, according to Grace Smith, writing forThe Hollywood Insider: "The effortlessly eccentric Holly Golightly balances out the brooding writer Paul Varjack."[7].Penélope Cruz's character in the movieVanilla Sky (2001) is included on Jamie Loftus' list of MPDGs, published by BDCWire.[8]Margot Robbie's character inAmsterdam (2022) is characterized byChristy Lemire writing forRogerEbert.com as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl.[9]Riley Keough's titular character inDaisy Jones & The Six (2023) has been described by Caroline Kraft ofThe New Yorker as akin to the MPDG: "A sexually liberated woman, she exists as a foil to male responsibility: she'll teach Billy the value of an unfettered approach while also instructing him in the risks of his own desires. He is drawn to her because she helps him understand himself. She is the caretaker of his catharsis and little else".[10]
In an interview inNew York about her 2012 filmRuby Sparks, actress and screenwriterZoe Kazan expressed skepticism over the use of the term, noting that its use could be reductive,diminutive, andmisogynistic. She disagreed that Hepburn's character inBringing Up Baby is a MPDG: "I think that to lump together all individual, original quirky women under that rubric is to erase all difference."[11]
In a December 2012 video,AllMovie critic Cammila Collar embraced the term, noting that its pejorative use is mainly directed at writers who do not give these female characters more to do.[12]
In December 2012,Slate'sAisha Harris posited that "critiques of the MPDG may have become more common than the archetype itself", suggesting that filmmakers had been forced to become "self-aware about such characters" and that the trope had largely disappeared from film.[13]
In July 2013, Kat Stoeffel, forNew York, argued that the term has its uses, but that it has sometimes been deployed in ways that are sexist. For example, she noted that "it was levied, criminally, atDiane Keaton inAnnie Hall andZooey Deschanel, the actual person.How could a real person's defining trait be a lack of interior life?"[14]
Similar sentiments were expressed by Monika Bartyzel forThe Week in April 2013, who wrote "this once-useful piece of critical shorthand has devolved into laziness and sexism". Bartyzel argues that"'Manic Pixie Dream Girl' was useful when it commented on the superficiality of female characterizations in male-dominated journeys, but it has since devolved into a pejorative way to deride unique women in fiction and reality".[15]
In July 2014, writing forSalon, Rabin stated that the term "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" had frequently been deployed in ways that are sexist and had become as much of a cliché as the trope itself. Rabin acknowledged that the phrase has its uses in specific, limited contexts, but overwhelming popularity had limited its effectiveness. Rabin concluded by saying that the term should be "put to rest".[16]
In 2022, actressZooey Deschanel rejected the label's application to her, saying "I don't feel it's accurate. I'm not a girl. I'm a woman. It doesn't hurt my feelings, but it's a way of making a woman one-dimensional and I'm not one-dimensional."[17] According toVariety, the label had followed her throughout her career since her appearance in500 Days of Summer.[18]
In 2025, Róisín Lanigan writing forThe Observer, contrasted the manic pixie dream girl with newer female archetypes, stating "the coquettish archetype of millennial movies might have been reductive but thee-girls andtrad wives that followed are even more oppressed."[19]
A male version of this trope, the Manic Pixie Dream Boy or Manic Pixie Dream Guy, was found in Augustus Waters from the film version ofThe Fault in Our Stars (2014); he was given this title in a 2014Vulture article, in which Matt Patches stated, "he's a bad boy, he's a sweetheart, he's a dumb jock, he's a nerd, he's a philosopher, he's a poet, he's a victim, he's a survivor, he's everything everyone wants in their lives, and he's a fallacious notion of what we canactually have in our lives."[20]
The Manic Pixie Dream Boy trope has also been pointed out in sitcoms such asParks and Recreation and30 Rock. The female protagonists of these shows marry men (Adam Scott'sBen Wyatt andJames Marsden'sCriss Chros, respectively), who, according to a 2012Grantland article, "patiently [tamp] down her stubbornness and temper while appreciating her quirks, helping her to become her best possible self."[21]
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