Geena Davis

Geena Davis (born January 21, 1956, Wareham, Massachusetts, U.S.) is an American actress who was skilled at comedic roles and brought charm and likability to eccentric characters.

Davis studied drama at New England College and later at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts, from which she graduated in 1979; she also worked in summer stock theatre. She then moved to New York City, where she initially found work waiting tables in restaurants. She became a lingerie model with the Zoli modeling agency and made her feature film debut in a bit part in the comedy Tootsie (1982). Davis was cast as a research assistant for an irascible talk show host played by Dabney Coleman in the short-lived (1983–84) television comedy Buffalo Bill. She went on to play guest roles in other TV series, including a recurring part in 1984 and 1986 as an inept housekeeper in the sitcom Family Ties, and she played the title character in the unsuccessful sitcom Sara (1985). Davis also appeared in the box office failures Fletch, with Chevy Chase, and Transylvania 6-5000, with Jeff Goldblum (both 1985), before her breakthrough role opposite Goldblum in David Cronenberg’s horror film The Fly (1986).

In 1988 Davis co-starred with Alec Baldwin, Michael Keaton, and Winona Ryder and portrayed a recently deceased bride in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, a manicurist who befriends three extraterrestrials in Earth Girls Are Easy, and a flamboyant and free-spirited dog trainer who breaks through the emotional reserve of a depressed travel writer played by William Hurt in The Accidental Tourist, based on a novel by Anne Tyler. Davis’s performance in the latter earned her an Academy Award for best supporting actress. She later played opposite Bill Murray in the heist comedy Quick Change (1990). Davis was perhaps most widely known for her performance as Thelma, an emotionally abused housewife who finds joy in acting on her own behalf, in the feminist road movie Thelma & Louise (1991; with Susan Sarandon). Both Davis and Sarandon were nominated for the best actress Oscar for their work. Davis also won notice for her turn as catcher Dottie Hinson in Penny Marshall’s A League of Their Own (1992). Davis’s subsequent movies were generally less significant. She starred in the 2000–01 TV sitcom The Geena Davis Show and as President Mackenzie Allen in the 2005–06 TV drama Commander in Chief, for which she won a 2006 Golden Globe Award. Davis was also a cast member (2014–18) on the medical drama Grey’s Anatomy, and she appeared (2016) in the horror series The Exorcist. In addition, she appeared in the third season (2019) of GLOW, about female wrestlers.

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Davis was also a well-known activist off of the screen. In 2004 she founded the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, an organization that highlights and seeks to correct gender imbalance and to challenge demeaning stereotypes within the entertainment media. The institute partnered with the UN women’s agency and the Rockefeller Foundation to produce (2014) the first international study of gender images in movies. In addition, Davis was named the UN special envoy for women and girls in information and communications technology in 2012.