Geena Davis Quotes

It's a fantasy that we could have a president who could actually make choices based on what's right, rather than having to weigh the political fallout. But that's sort of what we're showing. And you can dream.

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.

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.

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 any more. We would just, like, miss it.

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.

Ridiculously - fortunately - my first job was with Dustin Hoffman. I had a little part in this movie called Tootsie. And he taught me how to watch dailies. That it was very important.

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

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.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.

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 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.

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.

If you risk nothing, then you risk everything.

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."

Obviously, movies don't almost ever shoot in sequence.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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].

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

I'm not somebody who takes stuff home with them, that if I shoot a scene and I'm personally impacted for days or something. I mean it certainly is affecting and everything, but it doesn't penetrate to some deeper layer. I'm in it when I'm in it.

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 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 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 just love all the details about movies, and it's fun to be involved in everything. I just love it. It's just a little added fun thing to be consulted about stuff.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

The only time I got the absolute most insanely nervous in my life was at the Olympic trials, because archery is a horrible spectator sport. Nobody goes and watches an archery tournament. Because the targets are three-quarters of a football field away. Who can tell who's winning? You can't even see your own target from where you are.

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.

All I wanted, to be petite and attractive. I was afraid I'd never stop growing.

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.

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].

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

My theory of everything is that we are training kids to have gender bias against girls, therefore when you are an adult, you don't see it. We think it's normal.

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 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 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 do have a very chill - I can watch all my movies. A lot of people don't like to watch their work. I watch everything. All the time.

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

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.

I do like the process of producing. Later in my career, like when I had the TV show, I was a producer and I've been on a few things.

I had a pretty poor self-image for a long time. I broke into acting as a model in New York. I was never anything like a "supermodel," but I made a living at it for a couple years. The thing was, I was convinced that I was tricking everyone into thinking I was attractive.

I watched a lot of series. I didn't watch a lot of movies on TV. But I watched Gilligan's Island and Star Trek and all that stuff.

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 remember very distinctly being so tall I didn't fit sleeves, so I ended up modeling lingerie and bathing suits, sleeveless stuff, basically. I didn't have a good body, but I believed I knew how to stand or pose to mask it.