"When my friends and I would act out movies as kids, we'd play the guys' roles, since they had the most interesting things to do. Decades later, I can hardly believe my sons and daughter are seeing many of the same limited choices in current films."
Virginia Elizabeth "Geena" Davis (born January 21, 1956 in Wareham, Massachusetts) is an American actornote , film producer, writer, activist, and former fashion model.
She is known for her roles in The Fly (1986), Beetlejuice (1988), Thelma & Louise (1991), A League of Their Own (1992), The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), and Stuart Little (1999). She won the 1988 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Accidental Tourist, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress along with her co-star Susan Sarandon for Thelma & Louise.
At the turn of the millennium, out of frustration with the ongoing lack of quality, high-profile roles for women in film and television, she established the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media to advocate for change; her ongoing work in this regard won her an honorary Academy Award (the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, to be specific) in 2019.
Oh, and, she placed 24th out of 300 in the qualifying trials for the U.S. womens archery team for the 2000 Olympics, not quite making the team.
Selected Filmography
- Tootsie (1982)
- Family Ties (1984–1986)
- Fletch (1985)
- Transylvania 6-5000 (1985)
- The Fly (1986)
- Beetlejuice (1988)
- Earth Girls Are Easy (1988)
- The Accidental Tourist (1988)
- Quick Change (1990)
- Thelma & Louise (1991)
- A League of Their Own (1992)
- Accidental Hero (1992)
- Cutthroat Island (1995)
- The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)
- Stuart Little films (1999–2005)
- Stuart Little (1999)
- Stuart Little 2 (2002)
- Stuart Little 3: Call of the Wild (2005; voice)
- Commander in Chief (2005–2006)
- Coma (2012)
- In a World… (2013)
- When Marnie Was There (2014; voice of Yoriko Sasaki in the English version)
- Grey's Anatomy (2014–2015)
- The Exorcist (2016)
- Marjorie Prime (2017)
- She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2019; voice)
- GLOW (2019)
- Ava (2020)
Tropes associated with her roles:
- Awesome, Dear Boy: Her role in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power came about because she was touring the animation studio on behalf of her charity, and was so impressed she announced that any shows wanting her to make an appearance only had to ask!
- Billing Displacement: In The Accidental Tourist she is billed after Kathleen Turner, despite having a bigger part than her.
- Career Resurrection: Attempted with Commander in Chief. Despite great reviews, it was a ratings dud and was prematurely cancelled. While time will tell if she can officially achieve this trope, she does still work in both film and TV (focusing on productions that have juicy and/or unusual roles for women) while her advocacy work for female performers and creatives in general continues apace.
- Creator Backlash: She begged to be let off Cutthroat Island, realising it would be a disaster. The studio forced her and Renny Harlin to stay on by contract.
- Creator Couple: She and her husband Renny Harlin collaborated on Cutthroat Island and The Long Kiss Goodnight.
- The Other Marty: Debra Winger pulled out of A League of Their Own and Geena replaced her.
- Playing Against Type: In Cutthroat Island as an Action Girl.
- Playing with Character Type: In The Long Kiss Goodnight her character Samantha Caine starts out as a quirky lady like Geena's normal type. But then her Easy Amnesia lifts and she becomes a cold-hearted assassin.
- Reality Subtext: In A League of Their Own Doris asks Dottie "what are you, a genius?" and Geena actually has a 140 IQ - so she actually counts as a genius.
- Romance on the Set: She met Jeff Goldblum on the set of Transylvania 6-5000, and were in a relationship by the time he accepted the part of the Doomed Protagonist of The Fly (1986). She liked the script as well (she was helping him learn lines) and ended up getting the role of his onscreen love interest, resulting in an extreme inversion of the
Couple Bomb. They made one more film together, Earth Girls Are Easy, and were married mid-shoot in 1987. They divorced in 1990. - Separated-at-Birth Casting: Accidents Happen features her starring alongside Harry Cook and Harrison Gilbertson - who she herself says resemble her real life twin sons.
- Star-Derailing Role: The failure of Cutthroat Island - by nature of it being one of the biggest Box Office Bombs in history - marked the decline of Geena's bankability as a star.
- Star-Making Role: The Fly (1986) was only her fourth feature and first movie lead, but boosted her profile so much that her next two films were Beetlejuice and The Accidental Tourist, the latter of which won her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. In fact, an interview shot for the retrospective documentary Fear of the Flesh: The Making of The Fly has her recounting how during the long hours spent preparing Jeff Goldblum's makeup she would read books to him, one of which was the just-published Accidental Tourist. She knew there were plans for a movie version at that point, and was ruing her luck that she had no chance of landing the juicy role of Muriel...
- Statuesque Stunner: She's six feet tall and, well, look at her.
- Those Two Actors:
- With Jeff Goldblum (who is also her ex-husband) in Earth Girls Are Easy, The Fly (1986), and Transylvania 6-5000.
- She and Jeffrey Jones also star in Stuart Little and Beetlejuice.
- Throw It In!:
- A scene in Thelma & Louise has Louise calling from the car to Thelma at the motel pool. Thelma was supposed to get up and get in the car, but Geena had the volume up too high on her walkman and couldn't hear Susan Sarandon calling her. Susan got up and grabbed the headphones off her, startling her. This is used in the finished film.
- Subverted in another scene in the same movie. Thelma and Louise's reactions to the truck being blown up were supposed to be genuine. But when the two actresses saw the explosion, they were so astonished that they forgot to react. So Ridley Scott had to go back and film their reaction shots again.
- What Could Have Been:
- In the 90s, a Sailor Moon live-action film was being developed, and Geena was the number one choice to play Queen Beryl, but the project was shelved.
- Geena was cast first in Thelma & Louise, but it took so long to find an actress to play Louise, that she signed a contract saying she could be cast as her if they couldn't get anyone.
- The Accidental Tourist nearly cast Jessica Lange as Muriel, but Geena was the one who got the part.
