Geena Davis

Geena Davis (born January 21, 1956, Wareham, Massachusetts, U.S.) is an American actress noted for her skilled performances in comedic roles and for the charm and likability she brings to eccentric characters. Davis won an Academy Award for her performance in The Accidental Tourist (1988), and she has played memorable parts in popular films such as Beetlejuice (1988), Thelma & Louise (1991), and A League of Their Own (1992). She is also among the leading voices advocating for gender equality in media and entertainment.

Early life and roles

Davis studied drama at New England College and later at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts, from which she graduated in 1979; she also worked in summer stock theater. She then moved to New York City, where she initially found work as a waitress. She became a lingerie model with the Zoli modeling agency and made her feature film debut in a bit part in the comedy Tootsie (1982).

Davis was cast as a research assistant for an irascible talk show host played by Dabney Coleman in the short-lived television comedy Buffalo Bill (1983–84). She went on to play guest roles in other TV series, including a recurring part in 1984 and 1986 as an inept housekeeper on the sitcom Family Ties, and she played the title character in the unsuccessful sitcom Sara (1985). Davis also appeared in Fletch (1985), with Chevy Chase, and Transylvania 6-5000 (1985), with Jeff Goldblum, before her breakthrough role opposite Goldblum in David Cronenberg’s horror film The Fly (1986).

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Beetlejuice, Earth Girls Are Easy, and The Accidental Tourist

In 1988 Davis costarred with Alec Baldwin, Michael Keaton, and Winona Ryder and portrayed a recently deceased bride in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, a manicurist who befriends three extraterrestrials in Earth Girls Are Easy, and a flamboyant and free-spirited dog trainer who breaks through the emotional reserve of a depressed travel writer played by William Hurt in The Accidental Tourist, based on the novel by Anne Tyler. Davis’s performance in the latter earned her an Academy Award for best supporting actress. She later starred opposite Bill Murray in the heist comedy Quick Change (1990).

Thelma & Louise, A League of Their Own, Stuart Little, and later work

Davis is perhaps most widely known for her performance as Thelma, an emotionally abused housewife who finds joy in acting on her own behalf, in the feminist road movie Thelma & Louise (with Susan Sarandon). Both Davis and Sarandon were nominated for the best actress Oscar for their work. Davis also won notice for her turn as catcher Dottie Hinson in Penny Marshall’s A League of Their Own.

Her 1994 films, Angie and Speechless, failed to strike a chord with audiences. She then led two features directed by her husband at the time, Renny Harlin: Cutthroat Island (1995) and The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996). Cutthroat Island in particular was a massive failure at the box office and dealt a blow to her career. She took a break from acting for a couple of years amid her divorce from Harlin in 1998. She returned to the big screen in the children’s film Stuart Little (1999) as the adoptive mother of the titular mouse. For the next decade it was the only role she played on the big screen. She reprised the character in two sequels that followed in 2002 and 2005—the second a direct-to-video animated film.

Davis got top billing in the Australian indie drama Accidents Happen (2009). Starting in the mid-2010s, she began appearing more frequently onscreen, often as part of ensemble casts. Much of her work during this time was in indie projects, including the sci-fi film Marjorie Prime (2017), the spy thriller Ava (2020), and the drama Fairyland (2023). She also produced the 2018 documentary This Changes Everything, which scrutinizes the prevalence of sexism in Hollywood. In 2024 Davis appeared in the psychological thriller Blink Twice. In 2026 she played a supporting role in the stoner comedy The Wrong Girls, appearing with Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat.

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She has been cast alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger and Liam Hemsworth in the upcoming action movie The Kellys.

TV shows

She starred in the TV sitcom The Geena Davis Show (2000–01) and played President Mackenzie Allen in the TV drama Commander in Chief (2005–06), for which she won a 2006 Golden Globe Award. Davis was also a recurring cast member (2014–15) and later a guest star (2018) on the medical drama Grey’s Anatomy. She appeared (2016) in the horror series The Exorcist and in the third season (2019) of GLOW, about female wrestlers. She was part of the primary cast of the Netflix sci-fi series The Boroughs, which aired for a single season in 2026 before being canceled.

Activism

Davis is also a well-known activist. In 2004 she founded the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, an organization that highlights and seeks to correct gender imbalance and to challenge demeaning stereotypes within the entertainment media. The institute partnered with the United Nations women’s agency and the Rockefeller Foundation to produce (2014) the first international study of gender images in movies. In addition, Davis was named the UN special envoy for women and girls in information and communications technology in 2012.