You talked about these childhood superstitions and phobias, but there was a specific situation that was very traumatic during your adolescence: being molested by a man on your paper route. How did you handle reliving that experience while writing the book? The Academy To Honor Geena Davis, David Lunch, Wes Studi and Lina Wertmüller at 2019 Governors Awards". AMPAS. June 3, 2019 . Retrieved June 4, 2019.

Following a long period of intermittent work, Davis often ventured into television acting, and through her organization, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, saw her career expand during the 2010s. In 2012, she starred as a psychiatrist in the miniseries Coma, based on the 1977 novel Coma by Robin Cook and the subsequent 1978 film. She played a powerful female movie executive in the critically acclaimed comedy In a World... (2013), the directorial debut of Lake Bell. [40] Bell found her only dialogue to be her favorite in the film and called it her "soapbox moment". [40] With saucy self-deprecation, robust glee, and touch of goofiness, Davis recounts behind-the-scenes anecdotes from her award-winning film and TV career with a dishiness that only thinly veils the underlying message of empowerment and commitment that enabled her own journey to women’s advocacy for gender equality and opportunity off- and on screen . . . . Davis' memoir will be hot, given its dual draw of Hollywood tales and urgently needed gender-rights advocacy." — Booklist this book was really interesting! for context, geena davis is (among many other badass roles) the mom in stuart little. this memoir didn’t have all the depth and paradigm shifts of others i’ve read, but it really opened my eyes to parts of the acting world i’d never considered before. i thought the title “dying of politeness” was clever as she told so many stories where she chose extreme discomfort over just saying “no thanks” or “please stop”. can’t we all relate???

In the book, Davis writes about another audition where the director Rudy De Luca wanted her to act out a scene from the movie with him, sitting on his lap and shoving his face into her breasts. She tried to laugh it off as a joke but he insisted. She writes: “I ended up doing it, I didn’t feel like I had a choice but of course I did. This would be the first in a series of such incidents in my career that made me realise that the mistreatment of female actors was everywhere.” We talk about the #MeToo movement. It must have been satisfying to hear women’s stories finally?

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. [79] [5] She placed 24th and did not qualify for the team, but participated as a wild-card entry in the Sydney International Golden Arrow competition. [80] In August 1999, she stated that she was not an athlete growing up and that she entered archery in 1997, two years before her tryouts. [79] Filmography [ edit ] Film [ edit ] Year Solomon, Aubrey (1989). Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History. Scarecrow Press. p.260. ISBN 978-0810842441. Academy Award Winner. Humanitarian campaigner. Mensa member. Star of Beetlejuice, The Accidental Tourist and Thelma and Louise. Recently, Davis, sixty-six, spoke to me from her home in Los Angeles about her “journey to badassery,” her iconic roles of the eighties and nineties, and the Hollywood double standard that she is battling with numbers. Our conversation has been edited and condensed.Bodyguard to the stars': the man helping Jeff Bezos fight the Enquirer". TheGuardian.com. February 12, 2019. 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 American educational institutions. [70] [71] At any rate, I laughed and smiled out loud often while reading this. It was so funny, I got the audio and listened to her read it (that is when I heard her mother's voice). Damn” or “hell.” I think it means “devils” if you translate it. That’s what you yell if you smash your thumb or something.

Being diagnosed in her 40s with ADD, she says, was “very impactful”. “I thought there was something terribly wrong with me that I should be embarrassed about,” she says of her short attention span. And I didn’t want anybody to know, you know, that I had a character flaw... so it was a huge relief to find out that it was something that didn’t have to do with me being a failure, you know?” She talks about the “superpower” aspects of her condition. “It can be hard to focus but when you do focus, it’s like, the gears mesh, and you really can hyper focus and do it all day and all night. If I start doing something that I really am engaged in, I don’t know when to stop, I don’t know when to go to bed.” Weinraub, Bernard (March 7, 2001). "A Star Vehicle Sputters: CBS Cancels 'Bette' ". The New York Times . Retrieved June 10, 2012. It’s a little bit of the “What have you done for us lately?” syndrome. You’re in three hits, but then, if you’re in a big bomb, you’re the face of that. As a teen-ager, you spent a year on an exchange program in Sweden, which is definitely not something I knew about you. Have you retained your Swedish? The 55th Academy Awards (1983) Nominees and Winners". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences . Retrieved October 9, 2011.She has portrayed plenty of iconic characters over the years, from housewife-turned-outlaw Thelma in the feminist classic Thelma & Louise to her Oscar-winning turn as a quirky dog trainer in The Accidental Tourist. I’ve always liked Geena Davis and wished she got more roles after she hit her 40s. I never knew much about her as a person, and this entertaining memoir made me wish I had. Then, there’s her second career as what she calls a “middle-aged data geek.” In the early two-thousands, sidelined from Hollywood in her forties, she began wondering why the kids’ shows that she watched with her two-year-old daughter had so few female characters. Instead of taking her observations to the press, she sponsored an extensive research project that grew into the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, an organization that uses statistics to advocate for greater onscreen diversity and gender parity, and for which Davis has collected an honorary Oscar and, last month, an honorary Emmy.