Lena Dunham thanks her artistic parents for her success

Los Angeles - Lena Dunham is thankful she had creative parents to support her.

The Girls star's mother and father are both artists and they played a major role in allowing her to achieve her goals as they understood the difficulties of having an unconventional career.

She revealed: "I grew up with artists and so I understand a big part of the struggle is finding people that support you so that you can make your work full-time. Having parents who had a creative life means they knew the ups and downs."

The 28-year-old actress, writer and producer is thankful the film and television industry has finally started to accept women as more than just actresses.

She said: "It's such an exciting year. At the Golden Globes, four out of the five programmes nominated for best comedy had female showrunners, super diverse models of what it means to be female.

"It's such an incredible gift to be part of a group like that and to realise this isn't a trend but a new reality."

Lena - who stars as hapless twenty-something Hannah Horvath in the HBO show - can't understand why it's taken so long for women to progress, however.

She continued: "Women have always had stories to tell and there has always been an audience for them. The fact is women make up a massive percentage of the audience but it took a long time for Hollywood to catch up with that and think, 'Oh, if we have this much female audience then we should have some female creators who understand females and make products they want to see.

"It's not 1860, women have money in their wallets and want to see movies and buy DVDs and magazines. So much work for such a long time insulted the intelligence and the values of female viewers."