Beetlejuice. Earth Girls Are Easy. Thelma & Louise. A League of Their Own. These are just a few of the big feature film hits from actress Geena Davis. With all that goodwill, you would think that it would carry some weight as her career continued. Instead, Geena Davis seemed to fade away as she got older, ending up in guest spots and minor television roles.
But recently she landed a major award for her role off the camera, something she was presented at a recent event.
GEENA DAVIS WINS THE GOVERNOR’S AWARD FOR WORK IN GENDER BALANCE AND INCLUSION
At the 2022 Emmy Awards, Geena Davis was presented the Governor’s Award for her work with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. Davis accepted the award on behalf of the whole group and gave a short speech to those in attendance.
The Institute is focused on giving content creators data-driven approaches to how to tackle gender topics in different shows, series, movies, and other productions. According to their description, they want to “analyze representations of the six major marginalized identities on screen: women; people of color; LGBTQIA+ individuals; people with disabilities; older persons (50+); and large-bodied individuals in global Film, Television, Advertising and Gaming.”
Because of this mission, Geena Davis and her group were recognized as helping the industry move forward to ensure all groups are getting fair representation on the big and small screen.
Before receiving this award, Geena Davis has obviously carved out one of the most successful careers in Hollywood.
GEENA DAVIS APPEARED IN TOOTSIE EARLY IN HER CAREER
Geena Davis got her start on an iconic movie. It was 1982 and that film was the Dustin Hoffman-led film Tootsie. In it, she played a soap opera star who spent much of her time in her bra and underwear. What a way to break into the biz.
Davis turned Tootsie into a bunch of TV roles. She was on Knight Rider and then was a regular on the series Buffalo Bill. She grabbed roles on Fantasy Island, Riptide, Family Ties, and Remington Steele before she was the lead in the TV series Sara. That series lasted one season before Davis returned to her feature film roots.
GEENA DAVIS MAKES A BREAKTHROUGH WITH FLETCH, THE FLY, AND BEETLEJUICE
The hits began to arrive for Geena Davis. Fletch was the first, then came a modest one in Transylvania 6-5000. But her first real big blockbuster as a lead came in the Jeff Goldblum movie, The Fly. The David Cronenberg remake of the 1958 classic was known for its stomach-churning gore but also gave Geena Davis the spotlight she needed.
Speaking of Goldblum, Davis met him on the set of Transylvania, then reconnected with him on The Fly. The pair married (Davis’ second) in 1987 and then starred in one more movie together, Earth Girls Are Easy, before the two divorced in 1990.
The hits kept coming for Davis. She was blowing up at the box office as she co-starred in the Tim Burton classic Beetlejuice along with Michael Keaton and Alec Baldwin. The movie pushed her star into the stratosphere.
She moved on to The Accidental Tourist, Quick Change, and then the female empowerment-focused and immensely popular Thelma & Louise. The ultimate road-trip movie she starred in, along with Susan Sarandon, continued Davis’ popular run.
She took that role and turned it into this author’s favorite Geena Davis movie, A League of Their Own. A truly comedic and heart-warming look at the life of two sisters who join the very first women’s professional baseball league.
She then reunited with her Tootsie co-star Dustin Hoffman for Hero and then starred in Angie and Speechless before the Hollywood world came crashing down on her.
GEENA DAVIS BOMBS BIG WITH CUTTHROAT ISLAND AND THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT
Not only was Geena Davis’ misses big, but they were also world record-breaking big. The beginning of the end came when Geena Davis married director Renny Harlin. The initial idea was a good one. Banking on Davis’ rise in the Hollywood ranks, Harlin wanted to turn his then-wife into an action-movie star.
Their first film out was the unbelievably massive box office flop Cutthroat Island. Davis led the movie as pirate Morgan Adams and was joined in the cast by Matthew Modine, who’s star was also fairly big at the time. The result, well, at one time it was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest box office loss in the history of film. Ouch.
Maybe the movie wasn’t all THAT bad, looking back. Unfortunately, Harlin doubled down and teamed up with his wife for their next bomb, The Long Kiss Goodnight. A title befitting Davis’ career at the time. This time the duo brought along Samuel L. Jackson for the massive failure and it would end up being the last movie Harlin and Geena Davis would work on together.
Geena Davis divorced Harlin, filing for it on the day after Davis’ personal assistant gave birth to a child fathered by Harlin.
Whether it was the box office failures, Harlin’s cheating, or the combination of both, Geena Davis took some much-needed time away from show business. When she returned, it was more modest fare. She came back starring as Mrs. Little in Stuart Little. She also reprised that role two more time in Stuart Little 2 and Stuart Little 3: Call of the Wild.
SHE MOVED TO TELEVISION WITH COMMANDER IN CHIEF
Geena Davis began to transition more to the TV side of the business after her three-year hiatus. She found a guest spot on Will & Grace and then was the lead in Commander in Chief, starring as the first female president of the United States. Between that series and her next, 2016’s The Exorcist, she had some very minor success on a few feature films.
After The Exorcist, which lasted only one season, she continued a recurring role that she had found on Grey’s Anatomy. As her time on Grey’s came to an end, Geena Davis moved onto another series, GLOW. This was in 2019 but since her time ended on Grey’s, her output has been minimal at best.
For her part, Geena Davis seems to blame her lack of acting output on her age. Speaking of turning 40 to The Guardian she says once she had, “a four in front of my age, I fell off the cliff. I really did. In the early stages of my career, I was blithely going along thinking, ‘Meryl Streep, Jessica Lange and Sally Field, they’re all making these great female-centric movies. And I’m getting these great roles, really tippy-top roles, so things must be getting better for women.’ But suddenly, the great roles were incredibly scarce. It was a big difference.”
GEENA DAVIS COMPETED FOR A SPOT IN THE OLYMPICS
Geena Davis real passion has always been in sports. She took it to the next level in 1999 when, after learning archery two years previously, she competed for a spot on the US Olympic Archery team.
Ultimately Davis did not make the team but she says of her time competing, “It was the most out-of-body experience I’ve ever had, it was fabulous. I will never forget about it.”
SHE WAS RECENTLY REPLACED IN AN UPCOMING PILOT FOR CBS
Recently, Geena Davis has been making some moves back to television. Per IMDb, her last completed TV role was voice-acting in a number of episodes of the animated Netflix show She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. She portrayed Huntara, a stern but ultimately kind former soldier of the villanous Horde who eventually joins Adora/She-Ra’s Rebellion. The show was critically acclaimed and finished its fifth and final season in 2020.
More recently, Davis was reported to be starring in a currently untitled CBS pilot in which she would play the no-nonsense, lawyer mother of Skylar Astin’s private investigator character. It has been announced that Davis has dropped out of the role for undisclosed reasons and will be replaced by fellow Academy Award-winner Marcia Gay Harden.
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