Geena Davis Virginia Elizabeth "Geena" Davis is an American
actress, film producer, writer, former fashion model, and a women's Olympics archery team
semi-finalist.
She is known for her roles in The Fly, Beetlejuice, Thelma & Louise, A League of Their Own, The
Long Kiss Goodnight, Stuart Little and The Accidental Tourist, for which she won the
1988 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
In 2005, she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama for
her role in Commander in Chief.
Early life Davis was born in Wareham, Massachusetts.
Her mother, Lucille (née Cook), was a teacher's assistant, and her father, William F. Davis,
was a civil engineer and church deacon; her parents are from small towns in Vermont.
She has a brother named Danforth ("Dan").
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.
Enrolling at New England College, she eventually graduated with a bachelor's degree in drama
from Boston University in 1979.
Davis is a member of Mensa, a social organization whose members are in the top 2% of intelligence
as measured by an IQ test entrance exam.
Following her education, Davis served as a window mannequin for Ann Taylor until signing
with New York's Zoli modeling agency.
Career Davis was working as a model when she was
cast by director Sydney Pollack in his film Tootsie (1982) as a soap opera actress.
She followed the role with the part of Wendy Killain in the short-lived television series
Buffalo Bill, which aired from June 1983 to March 1984.
She also wrote the Buffalo Bill episode entitled "Miss WBFL."
During the run of Buffalo Bill, in 1983, Davis also appeared as Grace Fallon in an episode
of Knight Rider entitled "K.I.T.T the Cat".
Her television credits from the mid-1980s also include one episode of Riptide, three
episodes of Family Ties, and an episode of Remington Steele.
This was followed by a series of her own, Sara, which lasted thirteen episodes.
Among the movie roles she auditioned for was The Terminator's Sarah Connor, which went
to Linda Hamilton.
After roles in Fletch, The Fly, and Beetlejuice, Davis received an Oscar as Best Supporting
Actress for her appearance in The Accidental Tourist (1988), and a Best Actress nomination
for her role in Thelma & Louise (1991).
Davis replaced Debra Winger in the role of Dottie in A League of Their Own (1992), and
received a Best Actress Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance.
She then co-starred in Hero alongside Dustin Hoffman and Andy Garcia.
Davis then teamed up with then-husband, director Renny Harlin, for the films Cutthroat Island
and The Long Kiss Goodnight (both 1996).
She and Harlin co-produced the films.
Davis was nominated for the Saturn Awards for her performances as Samantha/Charlie in
The Long Kiss Goodnight, and as Eleanor Little in Stuart Little (1999), a role she reprised
in 2002 and again in 2005.
In 2000–2001, Davis starred in the short-lived sitcom The Geena Davis Show.
In early 2004 she guest-starred as Grace Adler's sister, Janet, on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace.
She went on to star in the ABC television series Commander in Chief, portraying the
first female President of the United States.
This role garnered her a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama Series in 2006, and
she also was nominated for an Emmy Award and a SAG Award for Outstanding Female Actor in
a Drama Series.
Also in 2006, she was awarded the Women in Film Lucy Award.
She starred in the Australian-produced, American-set Accidents Happen, which was released in April
2010.
Personal life On September 1, 2001, Davis married Iranian-American
plastic surgeon Reza Jarrahy.
They have three children: daughter Alizeh Keshvar (born April 10, 2002) and fraternal
twin sons Kian William Jarrahy and Kaiis Steven Jarrahy (born May 6, 2004).
The marriage is Davis' fourth.
She was previously married to Richard Emmolo (March 25, 1982 – February 26, 1983); actor
Jeff Goldblum, with whom she starred in three films, Transylvania 6-5000, The Fly and Earth
Girls Are Easy (1987–1990); and Renny Harlin, who directed her in Cutthroat Island and The
Long Kiss Goodnight (1993–1998).
Activism Davis is fronting the Women's Sports Foundation
campaign Geena Takes Aim in support of Title IX, an Act of Congress focusing on equality
in sports opportunities, now expanded to prohibit gender discrimination in United States' educational
institutions.
In 2004, while watching children's television programs and videos with her daughter, Davis
noticed what she thought was 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 4 discrete studies, including one on children's television) at
the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.
The study, directed by Dr. Stacy Smith, showed that there were nearly 3 males to every 1
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 TV and
movie programming.
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.
For her work in this field she received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Bates
College in May 2009.
In 2011, Davis became one of a handful of celebrities attached to USAID and Ad Council's
FWD campaign, an awareness initiative tied to that year's East Africa drought.
She joined Uma Thurman, Chanel Iman and Josh Hartnett in TV and internet ads to "forward
the facts" about the crisis.
Sports Davis has stated that she was not an athlete
growing up, and that her introduction to archery was in 1997, two years prior to her tryouts.
In July 1999, Davis was one of 300 women who vied for a semifinals berth in the US Olympic
archery team to participate in the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics.
She placed 24th of 300 and did not qualify for the team, but participated as a wild-card
entry in the Sydney International Golden Arrow competition.
Filmography Television
Awards and nominations