Geena Davis Actress Biography

Geena Davis Actress Biography

Having graduated with a bachelor’s degree in drama from Boston University in 1979, Davis signed with New York’s Zoli modeling agency and started her career as a model. She made her acting debut in the film Tootsie (1982), in 1986 she starred in the thriller The Fly (1986), which proved to be one of her first box office hits. While the fantasy comedy Beetlejuice (1988) brought her to international prominence, the drama The Accidental Tourist (also 1988) earned her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She cemented her leading actress status with her performance in the road film Thelma & Louise (1991), receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Later she starred in A League of Their Own (1992), which proved to be a critical and box office success, earning her a Golden Globe Award nomination. Davis’s roles in the box office failures Cutthroat Island (1995) and The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), both directed by then-husband Renny Harlin, were followed by a lengthy break and downturn in her career.

Davis took on the role of an animal hospital employee and dog trainer with a sickly son in the drama The Accidental Tourist (1988), opposite William Hurt and Kathleen Turner. Critic Roger Ebert, who gave the film four stars out of four, wrote: “Davis, as Muriel, brings an unforced wackiness to her role in scenes like the one where she belts out a song while she’s doing the dishes. But she is not as simple as she sometimes seems […]”. The film was a critical and commercial success, and she received an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for her appearance in it.

Davis starred as the adoptive mother of the titular character in the Stuart Little franchise (1999–2005) and as the first female president of the United States in the television series Commander in Chief (2005–2006), winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama for her role in the latter. Her later films include Accidents Happen (2009) and Marjorie Prime (2017). She has portrayed the recurring role of Dr. Nicole Herman in Grey’s Anatomy (2014–2015, 2018), and also starred as Regan MacNeil/Angela Rance in the first season of the horror television series The Exorcist (2017).

Renny Harlin
​ ​(m. 1993; div. 1998)​

In 2014, Davis provided her voice for the English version of the Studio Ghibli animated film When Marnie Was There, as she was drawn to the film’s abundant stories and strong use of female characters. She played the recurring role of Dr. Nicole Herman, an attending fetal surgeon with a life-threatening brain tumor, during the 11th season of Grey’s Anatomy (2014–15). In 2015, Davis launched an annual film festival to be held in Bentonville, Arkansas, to highlight diversity in film, accepting films that prominently feature minorities and women in the cast and crew. The first Bentonville Film Festival took place from May 5–9, 2015. Davis appeared as the mother of a semi-famous television star in the comedy Me Him Her (2016).

Born: Virginia Elizabeth Davis (1956-01-21) January 21, 1956 (age 65)Wareham, Massachusetts, U.S.
Alma mater: New England CollegeBoston University (BFA)
Occupation: Actoradvocate for gender equalityexecutive producermodel
Years active: 1982–present
Height: 6 ft 0 in (1.83 m)[1]
Spouse(s):

Jeff Goldblum
​ ​(m. 1987; div. 1991)​

Davis was the only American actor to be cast in the Australian-produced film Accidents Happen (2009), portraying a foul-mouthed and strict mother. She stated that it was the most fun she had ever had on a film set, and felt a deep friendship and connection to both of the actors who played her sons. Written by Brian Carbee and based on his own childhood and adolescence, the film received a limited theatrical release and mixed reviews from critics. Variety found it to be “led by a valiant Geena Davis”, despite a “script that mistakes abuse for wit”.

At an early age, she became interested in music. She learned piano and flute and played organ well enough as a teenager to serve as an organist at her Congregationalist church in Wareham. Davis attended Wareham High School and was an exchange student in Sandviken, Sweden, becoming fluent in Swedish. She attended New England College before earning a bachelor’s degree in drama from Boston University in 1979. Following her education, Davis served as a window mannequin for Ann Taylor until signing with New York’s Zoli modeling agency.

Richard Emmolo
​ ​(m. 1981; div. 1984)​

Davis is a supporter of the Women’s Sports Foundation and an advocate for Title IX, an Act of Congress focusing on equality in sports opportunities, now expanded to prohibit gender discrimination in United States’ educational institutions.

Director Tim Burton cast Davis in his film Beetlejuice (1988), as one half of a recently deceased young couple who become ghosts haunting their former house, alongside Alec Baldwin, Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder. The film made $73.7 million from a budget of $15 million, and Davis’s performance and the overall film received mostly positive reviews from critics.

In 2018, Davis returned to Grey’s Anatomy, reprising the role of Dr. Nicole Herman in the show’s 14th season, and executive produced the documentary This Changes Everything, in which she was also interviewed about her experiences in the industry. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it was named first runner-up for the People’s Choice Award: Documentaries. In 2019, she joined the voice cast of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power as Huntara. Also in Netflix in 2019, she joined the cast of Glow as Sandy Devereaux St. Clair, a former showgirl turned entertainment director of the Fan-Tan Hotel and Casino.

Davis starred in the sitcom The Geena Davis Show, which aired for one season on ABC during the 2000–01 U.S. television season. She went on to star in the ABC television series Commander in Chief, portraying the first female president of the United States. While this role garnered her a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama Series in 2006, the series was cancelled after its first season; Davis admitted she was “devastated” by its cancellation in a 2016 interview. “I still haven’t gotten over it. I really wanted it to work. It was on Tuesday nights opposite House, which wasn’t ideal. But we were the best new show that fall. Then, in January, we were opposite American Idol. They said, ‘The ratings are going to suffer, so we should take you off the air for the entire run of Idol, and bring it back in May. I put a lot of time and effort into getting it on another network, too, but it didn’t work”. She was also nominated for an Emmy Award and a SAG Award for Outstanding Female Actor in a Drama Series. She was awarded the 2006 Women in Film Lucy Award.

Davis began dating restaurateur Richard Emmolo in December 1977 and moved in with him a month later. The two married on March 25, 1981, but separated in February 1983 and divorced on June 27, 1984.

In 2004, while watching children’s television programs and videos with her daughter, Davis noticed an imbalance in the ratio of male to female characters. Davis went on to sponsor the largest research project ever undertaken on gender in children’s entertainment (resulting in four discrete studies, including one on children’s television) at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. The study, directed by Stacy Smith, showed that there were nearly three males to every one female character in the nearly 400 G, PG, PG-13, and R-Rated movies the undergraduate team of Annenberg students analyzed. In 2005, Davis teamed up with the non-profit group, Dads and Daughters, to launch a venture dedicated to balancing the number of male and female characters in children’s television and movie programming.

In 1985, she met her second husband, actor Jeff Goldblum, on the set of Transylvania 6-5000. The couple married on November 1, 1987 and appeared together in two more films: The Fly and Earth Girls Are Easy. Davis filed for divorce in October 1990, and it was finalized the following year.

In July 1999, Davis was one of 300 women who vied for a semifinals berth in the U.S. Olympic archery team to participate in the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics. She placed 24th and did not qualify for the team, but participated as a wild-card entry in the Sydney International Golden Arrow competition. In August 1999 Davis stated that she was not an athlete growing up and that her introduction to archery was in 1997, two years before her tryouts.

Davis launched the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media in 2007. The institute’s first focus is an on-the-ground program that works collaboratively with the entertainment industry to dramatically increase the presence of female characters in media aimed at children and to reduce stereotyping of females by the male-dominated industry. It seeks to address inequality in Hollywood. For her work in this field she received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Bates College in May 2009 and the Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, an Honorary Oscar, in 2019.

In the television series The Exorcist (2016), based on the 1973 film of the same name, Davis took on the role of grown-up Regan MacNeil, who has renamed herself Angela Rance to find peace and anonymity from her ordeal as a child. The Exorcist was a success with critics and audiences. In 2017, Davis starred in the film adaptation Marjorie Prime, alongside Jon Hamm, playing the daughter of an 85-year old experiencing the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, and appeared as the imaginary god of a heavyset 13-year-old girl in the comedy Don’t Talk to Irene. Vanity Fair felt that she “shine ” and stole “every scene” in Marjorie Prime, while Variety, on her role in Don’t Talk to Irene, remarked: “There’s no arguing the preternatural coolness of Geena Davis —a fact celebrated in self-conscious fashion by