Top 159 Quotes & Sayings by Geena Davis - Page 2

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.

Once I fix what kids watch, I'll be moving on to everything else.

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.

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.

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.

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'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.

I was so tall in high school that I was convinced that I was uncoordinated and not athletic. I was terrified to play any sport at all, no matter how hard they tried to convince me to be on the girls' basketball team as the tallest kid in class.

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.

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.

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."

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

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

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!".

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.

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 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.

My sons last summer, they won a trophy from their surfing camp and they came home and went right over to the shelf and put it up next to my Oscar. That's where we put our trophies.

Women can feel inspired by the story. People who haven't been traditionally given a chance to use their skills or shine are given a chance, and they prevail.

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.

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."

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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'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.

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.

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."

The ratio of male to female characters in movies has been exactly the same since 1946. So if you've ever had people say, you know, "It's better now, it's all changed, it's all different," it's not, it hasn't. Not yet.

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.

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 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.

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?

When it came time for college, I told my parents I was going to major in acting. And they were so removed from anything to do with show business - my dad built our house and my mom grew our food.

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

I think if you're doing a play, you're rehearsing enough that you get to a point where it's freeing again. But in a movie, if you rehearse too much, now you've just shown everybody what you're going to do. And any element of surprise or impulsiveness is taken away.

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

I'm so not a party person. I'm so not social and don't go to parties.

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

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 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 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 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.

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 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.

[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."

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

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.

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

In advertisements for your favorite products, are women denigrated or objectified in some way? All of that is important. I would rewrite my kids' books, I would write it in the books for the babysitter!

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