The one thing Geena Davis truly despises being called: “Why don’t I just blow my brains out?”
It’s been a rollercoaster career for Geena Davis, both in front of and away from the cameras, and throughout it all, there’s one thing that she’s always absolutely fucking hated being called.
For almost 45 years, the actor has experienced the ups and downs that come with trying to make it in Hollywood, even if the circumstances haven’t always been within her control, for all the wrong reasons. By her own admission, once she turned 40, the industry effectively cast her aside.
It maybe didn’t help that the last movie she made in her 30s was Cutthroat Island, which made history by becoming the single biggest money-loser in cinema history, a blockbuster that failed so badly that it killed a studio, and left a permanent black mark against almost every single one of its major players.
On the flipside, the first film of hers to be released after she hit the big 4-0 was The Long Kiss Goodnight, and while it didn’t quite live up to expectations at the box office, it holds up three decades later as one of her very best efforts, and alongside Thelma & Louise, it’s one of Davis’ two most cherished pictures.
The 1980s saw her debut in Tootsie, lend support in Beetlejuice and The Fly, and win an Academy Award for The Accidental Tourist, but by the turn of the millennium, she was essentially in Hollywood exile through no fault of her own. Fortunately, she had better things to do than play politics, with the Geena Davis Institute doing as much for her legacy as any number of acclaimed or award-winning performances.
However, when it comes to those acclaimed and award-winning performances, if she ever catches wind of anyone referring to her as “kooky,” it’s likely to tip her over the edge. “Let’s analyse a little bit,” she pondered. “I read articles where I seem all defensive about this, and I go, ‘Aaaghh, why don’t I just blow my brains out?'”
Davis made a good point about The Fly, “Now, that’s a movie that people often lump into a list of kooky things, because, well, my lover was a fly, but my character was pretty straight in that.” Even Muriel Pritchett, her Oscar-winning part in The Accidental Tourist, wasn’t safe from the five-letter word that’s haunted her for what feels like forever.
“It’s always driven me insane,” the star raged. “The adjective they put before dog trainer: Geena, who played the ‘wacky’ dog trainer.” She’s starred in seminal road movies, awful swashbucklers, underrated actioners, iconic sci-fi features, generational sports flicks, and even an unsung TV show or two in her time, and yet, as much as it pisses her off, she’s often been reduced to kooky Geena Davis.
Then again, maybe she’s not doing herself any favours by playing an overzealous personal assistant who gets stabbed to death in Blink Twice or a retired music industry manager living in a retirement community who ends up fighting a monster in The Boroughs, but at this stage of her career, she’s entitled to do whatever the fuck she wants, really.
