Geena Davis Quotations

We're showing kids a world that is very scantily populated with women and female characters. They should see female characters taking up half the planet, which we do.

Archery is something that I took up later and didn't know I had a natural aptitude for.

If you risk nothing, then you risk everything.

It's really important for boys to see that girls take up half of the planet - which we do.

As an Independent, she has no party backing... Her being the first Independent president trumps the fact that she's a woman. It causes even more upheaval in Washington than her being female.

Somebody warned me early on to be very careful about brushing up against the chocolate....

I haven't ever gone to any Mensa meetings.

I've always looked up to him, even though he is shorter.

This dapper little mouse that wore such cute clothes and said such interesting things, yeah. I thought it was a great idea to have a mouse like that in your family, so now I get to see what it was like.

When my friends and I would act out movies as kids, we'd play the guys' roles, since they had the most interesting things to do. Decades later, I can hardly believe my sons and daughter are seeing many of the same limited choices in current films.

I have an elbow that bends the wrong way, and I'd do things like stand in an elevator and the doors would close, and I'd pretend that my arm had got caught in it, and then I'd scream, 'Ow, ow, put it back!'

I just read that 81 percent of Americans are ready to vote for a woman. So it sounds like America is ready.

Rosie knows how to play ball. She's an athlete, for sure.

Something's like crossed over in me and I can't go back. I couldn't live.

We're making this as entertainment. But God willing, if this show stays on and people see a woman in that office for a while, I think it will help people become more used to it. It's certainly about time that we had a few female presidents.

I have a Web site that parents and girls can use to learn about Title IX and take action if they find their school is not in compliance. Thirty years after Title IX passed, 80 percent of schools are not in compliance.

I played this character twice in live action, and now I've become an animated character. It was actually fun to see myself drawn - I've never been a drawn character before.

People want you to satisfy every possible dream or expectation they would have for a woman president, ... We still live at a time when a female president is controversial - even though it seems so bizarre that we've made it to the 21st century excluding half of the potential talent pool.

We're showing kids a world that's very scantly populated with women and female characters.

So many other countries have had female leaders, in fact the U.S. ranks 61st in female representation in government and I think it is startling and sign of a change that needs to be made.

When I saw archery, which I had never really looked at before, I wondered if it needed some of the same skills as pistol shooting.

will happen. It's just a question of when.

As an Independent, she has no party backing, ... Her being the first Independent president trumps the fact that she's a woman. It causes even more upheaval in Washington than her being female.

This is the chance to see, in all its aspects, what it is like to suddenly become president. You have a crisis in Nigeria and you have a 6-year-old. And you have twins in trouble in high school.

I loved that I went straight from being an incredibly deadly assassin in 'Long Kiss Goodnight' to the mother of a mouse, ... I just thought that was fabulous ... we all have everything within us, the ability to be a killer or the girlfriend of an insect.

I love to see those barriers broken. What I'm really hoping is that we can get break the barriers and then get past it to the point that its really not shocking news.

It's important for what kids watch that, as far as possible, they see the real world reflected, to see men and women, boys and girls, sharing the space.

but I have to appreciate that actors have it a lot easier than other people who have to work these kinds of hours -- even the actual president.

I didn't really base my characterization on anybody, ... I don't really work that way when I played a role. I find the parts of myself that the character has. I believe we all have everything within us, the ability to be a killer or the girlfriend of an insect. It was finding those parts of myself that I felt could serve the character of Mackenzie.

It's certainly the role with the most gravitas that I've had to play,

It's a fascinating story to see him get in ... The fox is in the hen house.

It made perfect sense to me that I would play this part, ... I have always been interested in roles that are gonna be challenging for me - but also, characters that other women can identify with.

I competed in the high jump in high school, but I wasn't very good. My technique was to stand around looking intimidating because I was so tall.

For Thelma to be president -- I just think it's delightful,

Kids need to see entertainment where females are valued as much as males.

All of Hollywood is run on one assumption: That women will watch stories about men, but men won't watch stories about women. It is a horrible indictment of our society of we assume that one half of our population is just not interested in the other half.

So many female characters are the girlfriend of the person having the adventure. I want to play baseball, I don't want to be the girlfriend of the one [who plays].

My whole theory about why I couldn't find any creators who realized they were leaving out female characters, is because they were raised on the same ratio. I just heard someone the other day call it either "smurfing a movie," which is when there's one female character or "minioning a movie" which is when there's no female characters.

We have it in our heads that women only need to take up a certain amount of space and then we've done right by them. It's the same in every profession. We get a handful of women professors, a few female board members - that looks normal.

We are in effect enculturating kids from the very beginning to see women and girls as not taking up half of the space.

I don't know how in the twenty-first century we can possibly justify not showing girls things that they can aspire to, and at the same time, how can we possibly be showing boys this narrow vision of what women are and what they can be.

Look at the number of cop shows and lawyer shows and forensics shows... I think there could be room for two quite different examinations of the same political office.

I told my parents when I was three that I wanted to be in movies. I don't know what I saw at three years old that would make me decide that's a job and I want to have that job. But I was very confident, very sure that's what I wanted to do. I didn't do anything about it. I didn't prove it to myself or anything. I just knew.

If it isn't a success, that still wouldn't be grounds for divorce.

The more hours of television a girl watches, the fewer options she thinks she has in life.

When I started watching Breaking Bad, I binge-watched it. I thought it was so good that I started to cry. It's the only time in my life I've been completely jealous, the only time. I was like, [imitates crying] "I want to do what Bryan Cranston gets to do. I want a part like that." [both laugh] Isn't that pathetic?

Are you stupid or did you just take lessons?

I had a deliberate plan to get into movies by becoming a model, so I went to New York and got a job pretending to be a mannequin in store windows.

One thing is a fairly simple and straightforward thing. I don't long to direct. I really want to get some good parts.

The most common occupation for women in G rated films is royalty - which is a great gig, if you can get it.

So many other countries have had female leaders, in fact the U.S. ranks 61st in female representation in government and I think it is startling and sign of a change that needs to be made.

Archers are pretty focused.

A woman as the leader of the Free World is an impossibility. Muslim countries won't talk to you.

I'm such a wuss. But I know that The Exorcist [1973] is one of the best and most famous of [horor movies].

~There are moments when I feel like I have a looong road ahead of me, with college and dating and driving and all of that. But then I realize it just means that I have so much time left to enjoy my kids. And it really does go by so quickly.~

When I got pregnant, I told [Susan Sarandon ]. She said, "All right. I'm gonna tell you the thing to do when you're giving birth: Push like you're trying to win a prize, like you want to be the best patient he's ever had. He's going to give you a prize for winning that." So I did. [The doctor] said, "You are probably the best pusher I've had as a patient."

I meet Susan [Saradon], and she was amazing. We sit down to go through the script [Thelma & Louise]. I swear, I think it was page one - she says, "So my first line, I don't think we need that line. Or we could put it on page two. Cut this ..." And I was just like ... My jaw was to the ground.

That's the really frustrating thing, but also the fixable thing. My theory why no one notices is that that's the [women's roles] ratio thing they grew up with. It's just been that way forever, so they don't see it.

Even though I was 34 or 35 or something. I was like, "People can do that? Women can actually just say what they think?" It was an extraordinary experience to do that movie [Thelma & Louise] with [Susan Sarandon] because every day was a lesson in how to just be yourself.

I drive [Susan Sarandon] nuts. I'm always talking about her being my hero. I'm sure she's probably sick of it.

I realized that in all the sectors of society where there's a huge gender disparity, the one place that can be fixed overnight is onscreen. You think about getting half of Congress, or the presidency ... It's going to take a while no matter how hard we work on it. But half of the board members and half of the CEOs can be women in the next movie somebody makes; it can be absolutely half.

I was 16 or something. [My aunt] broadened my understanding of what women could be like and do and that there's a big world out there. So she had a huge impact on me.

My knowledge of horror films is pathetic because I can't really watch them.

[My aunt] took me to my first play, too, which was dinner theater. I don't know if they have that in England, but you eat a dinner while you watch a play. And she ordered a glass of wine. I was like, "Oh my God. This is, like, the most sophisticated thing I have ever done."

I had this aunt who had a career and traveled. She'd say things like, "When you go to college, I think we should go scuba diving in the summer. The scuba diving in Portugal is fabulous." And I'd be like, "Portugal! Holy cats!".

My parents are both from Vermont, very old-fashioned New England. We heated our house with wood my father chopped. My mom grew all of our food. We were very underexposed to everything.

I was really lucky that I had an aunt who was very inspiring to me. She was different than anybody in my family on either side.

The whole point of why I'm doing this is to show all kids, boys and girls, that women take up half the space and do half of the interesting things in the world and have half of the dreams and ambitions. Our slogan is, "If they see it, they can be it."

I met the former president of Iceland [Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir] once. I think she was president for, like, 16 years or something. She said she used to get letters from little boys saying, "Madam President, do you think it will ever be possible for a boy to be president?" Just like we assume that girls can't be politicians, they were assuming boys can't. That's what they thought. It's so crazy.

When I started out, maybe because I did Thelma & Louise early on - but people were always asking, "Are things better for women now?" I would say, "Yeah, I think so. It seems like it." Then a few years in, I started saying, "I think so. I'm getting a lot of good parts, but I don't know." Then eventually, I was like, "Google it. I don't know, but it doesn't seem great."

I wish I knew who said it, but my favorite quote is, "If a person can do it, I can do it."

The film festival is in a town in Arkansas, a quintessentially American town with a little town square. It's to champion women and diversity in all media, so TV, movies, eventually, digital, whatever you get into. That's the goal. We're using the same philosophy as my institute, which is to make it research-based and really try to work directly with filmmakers and content creators and move the needle. It's the only film festival in the world where the prizes are guaranteed distribution.

People think of me in the same breath as Robert Redford and Robert De Niro.

I'm the mother of two daughters, one of whom is going to get possessed. It's really spooky and great. I'm shooting it right now. That's why I'm in Chicago. I wanted to tell you about the other direction that this trying-to-get-more-female-characters thing has taken, which is that I launched my own film festival last year.

An eye-opening moment in my life, a very defining moment, was the first time I met Susan Sarandon [before shooting Thelma & Louise]. We were going to meet, just Ridley [Scott] and Susan and I, to go through the script and see if we had any thoughts or ideas. I was reading the script, and in the most girly way possible, meaning that if it was a line that could change or something different I'd like to see, I would think about each one and say, "Well, this one can wait till the set because I don't want to bring up too many things."

It's okay if it takes two or three years for something really good to come along, but I don't want to wait ten years for something great to come along.

This is really funny, but we did a study of the occupations of female characters on TV, and there are so many female forensic scientists on TV because of all the CSI shows and Bones and whatever. I don't have to lobby anybody to add more female forensic scientists as role models. There's plenty.In real life, the people going into that field now are something like two-thirds women.

We all know the huge problem there is with entertainment in general leaving out women. Especially as actors, we know there are fewer great parts for women.

My daughter was a toddler. I had no idea there was anything wrong with kids' media.I started watching little preschool shows with her or G-rated videos or whatever; I couldn't believe what I was seeing, that there seemed to be far more male characters than female characters in what we make for little kids. It was just a shock.

I'm very competitive, I think.

I just started asking my friends if they had noticed. None of them - feminists, mothers, daughters - noticed until I pointed it out. Then I decided to bring it up within the industry. I knew a lot of people, so I'd say, "Have you ever noticed how few female characters there are in kids movies?" when I met a director, a producer, whatever. And they said, "Oh, but that's not true anymore."

My point was the world is missing female characters. A lot of times there is one female character, maybe even a cool one, maybe even an important one. But where are all the rest?

I don't really bust anybody publicly. It's much more efficient if I can impact the creators. So that's what we do. It's had a great impact.

If we show fictional characters doing cool stuff, then girls will want to be it in real life.

Everything I do, I want to take it to the farthest possible degree. I can't just do something the plain way. I don't cook a bowl of pasta; it has to be puff pastry swans.

Having a very complicated life, or a lot of problems, or a lot of flaws, is always great to play.

I had told my agents that I never wanted to do an hour-long TV show. I said, "I'm not that stupid." Because it's the worst lifestyle in Hollywood.

My thing in high school was being the tallest kid in class. Always. I was always the tallest kid in class.

The second I finish shooting something, I know I could have done it better if we started right then.

I was all limbs and I was very convinced that I must be uncoordinated, so I didn't want to try any sports. And the girls' basketball team was constantly like, "Please, please just come play."

I wanted to take up a sport the real way and see if I actually had athletic ability. And then I happened to see it was during the Atlanta Olympics. And there was a lot of coverage of archery because the U.S. men's team won all the medals. And I thought, "Wow, that's beautiful. And it's so dramatic, a beautiful sport. And I wonder if I would be good at it?"

I just passed on some a script that I was sent, because I said, "I haven't yet played the person staying home, the one that says, 'Good luck, honey,' or whatever." And so that's what I look for. Therefore, by virtue of that exclusion, I'm always trying to find roles that are challenging.

The main thing about archery is a battle with yourself. You can ruin it all. Once you have learned the technique, the point is to recreate the perfect technique over and over and over.

It's a horrible and wonderful battle with yourself, to stay calm, stay in the moment. My coach said, "Stay here, not at the target. Don't be down there." It's why they call it the Zen art.

Instead of trying to manufacture feelings, use the way you already feel. Or at least add that in.

They called and said, "I know we're not supposed to even tell you, but you've been offered to play the President." And I said, "OK. Say yes." And they were like, "Do you want to read it maybe?" And I was like, "No, I just want to be the president."

I watch very little television, actually. There's so many shows I want to watch and then I know I'll get hooked and I have to binge-watch the entire thing.

For a long time, way back in the '30s and '40s, there were fabulous female roles. Bette Davis and all those people had incredible, great roles. After World War II, something happened where it was not only "get out of the factories," but "get out of the movies." That's when women's roles started to really [change].

There were so many women who had worked throughout the war in every possible job. They were told, "Now leave, so the men can come in" and there was this whole feminizing of women: You have to be very, very retiring and submissive and whatever.

Any movie you see, if Tom Cruise is in an action movie or whatever it is, The Avengers, there's going to be a kick-ass female character. Usually one. And there's a term for this, but I don't know what it is. But someone's coined a term where there's one female character who's incredibly tough and strong and just as good as the guys at whatever it is they're doing, and usually wearing black, skin-tight clothes, and [she] has no personality whatsoever, and is not funny.