Geena Davis

• 1. Introduction

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  In July 1999, Geena Davis was one of 300 women competing for a semifinal place with the United States Olympic archery team. By then she was an established film star, yet she stood in line with hundreds of rivals, aiming for the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics. That choice fits a career that has never followed a straight line. Davis was born in 1956 in a small Massachusetts town. She went on to win an Academy Award, lead a hit road movie, and then watch her film offers thin out. How did a girl who played organ in church end up in Hollywood? What happened when the leading roles slowed down? And what did she notice while watching children's television with her daughter that she could not leave alone?

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• 2. A Small-Town Start

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  Lucille Davis, born Lucille Cook, worked as a teacher's assistant, and her husband William F. Davis was a civil engineer who also served as a church deacon. Both of them came from small towns in Vermont. Their daughter Virginia Elizabeth was born on the 21st of January 1956 in Wareham, Massachusetts. She had an older brother named Danforth, known as Dan.

  In her 2022 memoir, Davis wrote that Dan invented the nickname Geena shortly after she was born. It kept her distinct from her Aunt Virginia, who already went by Ginny.

  Music came before acting. Davis learned piano and flute, and as a teenager she played organ well enough to be the organist at her Congregational church. At Wareham High School she was a cheerleader, and she became cheer captain in her final year.

  A year abroad reshaped her plans. As an exchange student in Sandviken, Sweden, she became fluent in Swedish and got engaged to a classmate, Mats Dahlsköld. She still exchanges letters with him.

  The year also cost her something. Boston University required an audition for its acting program, and she missed it while she was in Sweden. She began instead at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire, and later transferred to Boston University. She never earned enough credits to graduate, with an incomplete in at least one class and an F in movement class.

  Her first job after university was modeling for window mannequins at Ann Taylor. She then signed with the Zoli Agency, a modeling agency in Manhattan. She is also a member of Mensa. A film role in 1982 would soon become her acting debut.

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• 3. Breaking Through

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  Director Sydney Pollack cast Davis in Tootsie as a soap opera actor. She described the part as "someone who's going to be in their underwear a lot of time". The comedy became the second most profitable film of 1982 and drew 10 Academy Awards nominations.

  Television came next. From June 1983 to March 1984, Davis played Wendy Killian in the NBC series Buffalo Bill, and she earned a writing credit on one episode. The show collected 11 Emmy Awards nominations but only lukewarm ratings, and it was canceled. During those months she also guest-starred on Knight Rider, Riptide, Family Ties and Remington Steele. Her own series, Sara, then ran for 13 episodes.

  Davis also auditioned for Sarah Connor, the lead in the 1984 film The Terminator. That part went to Linda Hamilton. In Fletch, released in 1985, Davis played the colleague of a Los Angeles Times reporter, played by Chevy Chase, who goes undercover to expose drug trafficking on the beaches of Los Angeles. She also appeared in the horror comedy Transylvania 6-5000.

  The Fly, released in 1986, was her real turning point. The film was loosely based on a short story by George Langelaan from 1957. Opposite Jeff Goldblum, Davis played a science journalist who becomes the love interest of an eccentric scientist. It was a commercial success and helped establish her as an actor. In 1987 she appeared with Goldblum again in the offbeat comedy Earth Girls Are Easy. The next year would bring her a very different kind of attention.

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• 4. Oscar and Landmark Roles

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  Beetlejuice, released in 1988, earned $73.7 million from a budget of $15 million. Tim Burton directed the horror comedy, and Davis played one half of a recently deceased young couple who haunt their former house. Alec Baldwin, Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder also starred. Reviews were mostly positive for both the film and her performance.

  The Accidental Tourist arrived the same year. Davis played Muriel, an animal hospital employee and dog trainer with a sickly son, alongside William Hurt and Kathleen Turner. Roger Ebert gave the film four stars out of four. He wrote that Davis "brings an unforced wackiness to her role in scenes like the one where she belts out a song while she's doing the dishes." The film was a critical and commercial success, and she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

  In Quick Change, from 1990, she played the girlfriend of a man who robs a bank in midtown Manhattan while dressed as a clown. It was based on a book by Jay Cronley and remade the 1985 French film Hold-Up, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. Box office returns were modest, but the Chicago Tribune called the lead actors "funny and creative while keeping their characters life-size".

  Then came Thelma & Louise, directed by Ridley Scott. Davis and Susan Sarandon played friends whose road trip takes unforeseen turns. The 1991 film was a critical and commercial success, influenced other films and artistic works, and became a landmark feminist film. Davis was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, and a Golden Globe. The film also gave Brad Pitt his breakout role as a drifter. In his 2020 Oscar speech for Best Supporting Actor, Pitt thanked Scott and Davis for "giving me my first shot."

  In 1992, Davis starred with Madonna and Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own, as a player on an all-women's baseball team. The film was number one at the box office and the tenth highest-grossing release of the year in North America. It earned her first Golden Globe nomination in the musical or comedy category. That same year she played a television reporter in Hero, opposite Dustin Hoffman and Andy Garcia. The film flopped, but Ebert praised her and singled out her shout through an ambulance door after a plane crash: "This is my story! I did the research!" Her next releases, in 1994, would struggle to find audiences.

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• 5. The Pirate Captain's Fall

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  In 1994's Angie, Davis played an office worker in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn who dreams of a better life. Critics were mixed on the film, though many praised her, and it failed commercially. Her other release that year, Speechless, reunited her with Michael Keaton as insomniac writers who fall in love until they discover they are writing speeches for rival candidates in a New Mexico election. Reviews were negative and returns modest, yet the role brought her a second Golden Globe nomination in the musical or comedy category.

  Her then-husband, director Renny Harlin, hoped to turn her into an action star. They made Cutthroat Island in 1995 and The Long Kiss Goodnight in 1996. The second film became a moderate success. The first flopped, drew unfavorable reviews, and was listed by Guinness World Records as the largest box office loss. It is considered a contributing factor in her decline as a bankable star.

  The New York Times described the two years she took off after her divorce in 1998 as unusually long. In a 2016 interview with Vulture, Davis recalled that roles dried up in her 40s. "In my entire 40s, I made one movie, Stuart Little," she said. She did not sound bitter about it, adding, "I got to play a pirate captain! I got to do every type of role, even if the movie failed."

  A Disney live-action Sailor Moon adaptation in 1997 might have offered a path forward. Davis was in talks to play Queen Beryl, but the project was scrapped very early on.

  The archery tryout of July 1999 belongs to this stretch. Davis placed 24th and did not make the team, though she took part as a wild-card entry in the Sydney International Golden Arrow competition. In August 1999 she said she had not been an athlete growing up and had only taken up archery in 1997, two years before the tryouts.

  Also in 1999, she appeared as Eleanor Little, the adoptive mother of the title character in the well-received family comedy Stuart Little. She returned for Stuart Little 2 in 2002 and for Stuart Little 3: Call of the Wild in 2005. Before those sequels, though, a sitcom with her own name on it was waiting.

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• 6. Television and Beyond

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  The Geena Davis Show, in which she played Teddie Cochran, ran for one season on ABC and totaled 22 episodes. A bigger swing followed. In Commander in Chief she played President Mackenzie Allen, the first female president of the United States, across 18 episodes. The role won her the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a television drama in 2006. It also brought nominations for a Primetime Emmy and a Screen Actors Guild Award, and the 2006 Women in Film Lucy Award.

  The network canceled the show after its first season, and Davis said in 2016 that she was "devastated". She explained that it aired on Tuesday nights against House, which she called less than ideal, yet "we were the best new show that fall." In January it was placed against American Idol. She was told the ratings would suffer, so the network proposed pulling it for the whole run of Idol and bringing it back in May. She also spent a great deal of time trying to move it to another network, without success.

  In 2009 she was the only American actor in the Australian film Accidents Happen, playing a foul-mouthed, strict mother. She called it the most fun she had ever had on a film set. Variety described the film as "led by a valiant Geena Davis", though it criticized the script.

  The 2010s brought a steady run of varied work, partly because of her institute. In 2012 she played a psychiatrist in the miniseries Coma, based on Robin Cook's 1977 novel. In 2013 she played a powerful female movie executive in In a World..., the directorial debut of Lake Bell. In 2014 she voiced a character in the English version of the Studio Ghibli film When Marnie Was There, drawn by its many stories and strong female characters. The same year she began playing Dr. Nicole Herman, a fetal surgeon with a life-threatening brain tumor, in the 11th season of Grey's Anatomy. She returned to the role in the show's 14th season in 2018.

  In 2016 she took on the horror series The Exorcist, playing the grown Regan MacNeil, who has renamed herself Angela Rance to find peace and anonymity after her childhood ordeal. Critics and audiences liked the show. In 2017 she played the daughter of an 85-year-old woman showing the first symptoms of Alzheimer's in Marjorie Prime, opposite Jon Hamm. Vanity Fair wrote that she stole "every scene". That year she also played the imaginary god of a heavyset 13-year-old girl in Don't Talk to Irene. Variety praised "the preternatural coolness of Geena Davis".

  In 2019 she joined She-Ra and the Princesses of Power as the voice of Huntara. She also appeared in GLOW as Sandy Devereaux St. Clair, a former showgirl turned entertainment director of the Fan-Tan Hotel and Casino. Disney's Candlelight Processional has also hosted her as a guest narrator, at Disney World in 2011-2012 and 2019 and at Disneyland in 2015. In 2022, her likeness was used for Poison Ivy in the DC comic series Batman '89. She went on to appear in films including Fairyland in 2023 and Blink Twice in 2024. Her latest major role is in The Boroughs, a Netflix science fiction series produced by The Duffer Brothers, which premiered in May 2026.

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• 7. Counting Characters

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  In 2004, while watching children's programs and videos with her daughter, Davis noticed that male characters far outnumbered female ones. She decided to measure it. She sponsored what was described as the largest research project ever on gender in children's entertainment, at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. It produced four separate studies, including one on children's television. Directed by Stacy Smith, the study analyzed nearly 400 films rated G, PG, PG-13 and R, and found nearly three male characters for every female one.

  That same year Davis launched the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. It works with the entertainment industry to put more female characters into children's media and to reduce inequality and stereotyping of women in Hollywood. In 2005 she teamed up with the non-profit group Dads and Daughters on a venture to balance male and female characters in children's television and movies.

  The institute's work has spread into projects with her name behind them. In 2015 Davis launched the Bentonville Film Festival in Bentonville, Arkansas, which accepts films that prominently feature minorities and women in the cast and crew. The first festival ran from the 5th to the 9th of May 2015. In 2018 she executive produced This Changes Everything, a documentary in which she is also interviewed about her experiences in the industry. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was named first runner-up for the People's Choice Award for documentaries. In 2019 she executive produced Mission Unstoppable, a CBS educational show, through the institute.

  Honors followed. Bates College in Lewiston, Maine awarded her an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree in May 2009. In 2019 she received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, an honorary Oscar from the Academy, and in 2022 she received a Governors Award. She also supports the Women's Sports Foundation in Downtown Manhattan and advocates for Title IX, the Act of Congress that began with sports equality and has expanded to prohibit gender discrimination in American educational institutions.

  Her advocacy has also reached beyond Hollywood. In 2011 she joined Uma Thurman, Chanel Iman and Josh Hartnett in ads for the FWD campaign by USAID and the Ad Council, urging viewers to "forward the facts" about the East Africa drought.

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• 8. Marriages and Memoir

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  Davis began dating restaurateur Richard Emmolo in December 1978 and moved in with him a month later. They married on the 25th of March 1981, separated in February 1983, and divorced on the 27th of June 1984. She later dated Christopher McDonald, her future Thelma & Louise co-star, and they were briefly engaged.

  In 1985 she met actor Jeff Goldblum on the set of Transylvania 6-5000. They married on the 1st of November 1987, and Davis filed for divorce in October 1990. It was finalized in 1991. In 2022 she told People that the relationship "was a magical chapter in my life". She liked being married to a fellow actor, she said, because he understood what she was going through and "was not in competition" with her.

  Security expert Gavin de Becker was her boyfriend in the early 1990s. After a five-month courtship, she married filmmaker Renny Harlin on the 18th of September 1993. Davis filed for divorce on the 26th of August 1997, a day after her personal assistant gave birth to a son fathered by Harlin. The divorce became final in June 1998, and in the interim she was romanced by fitness trainer Keith Cubba.

  In 1998 Davis began dating Reza Jarrahy, an Iranian American craniofacial plastic surgeon. They allegedly married on the 1st of September 2001. Their daughter Alizeh was born on the 10th of April 2002, and fraternal twin sons Kaiis and Kian followed on the 6th of May 2004. Jarrahy filed for divorce in May 2018, listing the separation date as the 15th of November 2017. Davis responded with a petition claiming they were never legally married. The divorce became final in December 2021, and the sons' surname changed from Davis-Jarrahy to Jarrahy.

  In October 2022, HarperOne published her memoir, Dying of Politeness. It follows her path from a conventionally feminine New England childhood and trauma to what she calls feminist "badassery", one role at a time. In 2025, Penguin Books published The Girl Who Was Too Big for the Page, a children's picture book that Davis both wrote and illustrated.

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