Geena Davis Quotes

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.

I had very, very bad self-esteem - that I was a fake, everybody was going to find out, that I didn't deserve to have success, just about my looks and really, really bad self-esteem.

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 only movies I saw till I was 17 were made by Disney. My parents had this thing. Disney was like, you know, "Ford is a good car. Disney makes good movies that are good for kids and safe."

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

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.

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

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.

I was tall from minute one. Always the tallest kid by a large margin. And my fantasy was to take up less space in the world.

The fictitious worlds created for kids are nearly bereft of female presence. It's sending a very clear message from the beginning that women and girls do not have half of the adventures, that they're not as important. We're teaching kids that girls and women don't take up half the space in the world.

After a couple of rehearsals and a couple of takes, Sydney Pollack says, "Come here. Why are you not nervous?" And I [say], "Do you think it would be better if I was nervous?" And he says, "No, it's just I can't understand it - how you would be first time on a set, you're acting, when he flubs his line you make up a new line. It's very interesting." It's not that I think I'm great; that's what I knew I wanted to do.

Women are in many ways second-class citizens in the United States in 2016, because of the way that we're portrayed in popular culture.

I was lucky enough to be in some movies where I had powerful characters or I got to be the president on TV for a little while. Very short administration.

I think I always had joie de vivre. But I had pretty bad self-esteem growing up and much of my adult life.

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

I always want a challenge. My whole career has been based on trying to avoid female characters that don't get to do anything. And it's really hard to avoid those.

Because I had some roles that resonated with women, I immediately noticed that there were far more male characters than female characters in what we're showing little kids in the 21st century, which was stunning to me. But I couldn't find anybody else who noticed.

I almost never get nervous. I have ice water in my veins.

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.

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.

[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."

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

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 with her because every day was a lesson in how to just be yourself.

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.

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

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.

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.

It's partly because our culture so hyper-sexualizes females that if you don't measure up to whatever we're forced to think is the standard, then you feel inadequate.

I really only did theater in school in college. I did summer stock a couple of times in the summer, and plays that the school put on. But I knew I wanted to be in movies.

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

I don't think male characters are as one-dimensional as female characters.

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.

My scripts are always filled with notes. I like to just analyze everything from the point of view of the whole picture, of the movie, my whole picture.

When I was a model, actually, for a little while, my friend that I worked with a lot, she had horrible self-esteem too. We decided that the exact moment when we actually thought we were attractive, we wouldn't be anymore. We would just, like, miss it.

We need more female directors, we also need men to step up and identify with female characters and stories about women. We don't want to create a ghetto where women have to do movies about women. To assume stories about women need to be told by a woman isn't necessarily true, just as stories about men don't need a male director.

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'm very competitive, I think.

The most important thing is to change what children see from the beginning. To not create a problem we have to fix later.

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

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

What are we doing that for in the 21st century? Why on earth would we teach kids that girls are less important than boys? It just made no sense to me.

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.

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?

Archers are pretty focused.

I once read a quote that I think was Michelle Pfeiffer in an article, who said that she thought people went into acting because maybe if you could convince millions of people to like you, you will finally like yourself, approve of yourself. I don't know if that may have been a part of it.

I haven't ever gone to any Mensa meetings.

The thing I noticed, have learned the most about directors, is: when they're very confident in themselves, they're open to creativity from other people. If they're scared or nervous, then they shut off and nobody's ideas [count].

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?"