- Geena Davis is a famous actress
- She has starred in many films
- Learn more about her life and what's she is doing now
Virginia Elizabeth "Geena" Davis (*1956) was born and raised in Massachusetts and graduated from Boston University in 1979 with a B.A. in drama. She soon moved to New York City to pursue a career in modeling and eventually started acting as well.
Her very first credited acting role actually came in a hit movie when she played the role of "April" in Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange, and Bill Murray.
Geena Davis: Oscar winner in 1989!
Davis went on to get some guest roles in a number of popular TV shows such as Knight Rider, Remington Steele and Buffalo Bill. She got her first starring role in the 1986 thriller The Fly and became known to a larger audience when she starred in Beetlejuice - she won the Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Accidental Tourist (1988).
Geena Davis' role of a lifetime in Thelma & Louise
But the career-defining role that truly made her a Hollywood A-Lister came in 1991 when she starred as "Thelma Yvonne Dickinson" alongside "Louise Elizabeth Sawyer" (Susan Sarandon) in the road movie sensation Thelma & Louise. The movie actually premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and received critical acclaim as well as making almost three times its production budget at the box office.
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But not only did Thelma & Louise become a re-watchable classic (AND introduced the world to a handsome young actor by the name of Brad Pitt), but it also elevated Geena Davis' career to a new level - she received an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress for her role as "Thelma", but did not win.
Davis went on to star in movies like A League of Their Own, Cutthroat Island, The Long Kiss Goodnight and Stuart Little (and its two sequels!). But she also had some TV roles and got her own show (The Geena Davis Show) on ABC from 2000 until 2001 as well as starring as "President Mackenzie Allen" in Commander in Chief from 2005 to 2006.
In recent years, Davis had some guest roles in movies, especially in TV - she had a recurring role as "Dr. Nicole Herman" in Grey's Anatomy from 2014 until 2018 and most recently starred as "Sandy Devereaux St. Clair" in Netflix' GLOW with Alison Brie.
Geena Davis' personal life
Geena Davis got married for the first time in 1982 to Richard Emmolo but the couple got divorced one year later. Her second marriage was to fellow actor Jeff Goldblum and it lasted from 1987 until 1990. Davis made a third attempt with Finnish director Renny Harlin in 1993 and they divorced in 1998, unfortunately.
She got married to Reza Jarrahy in 2001 and the couple has three kids: Alizeh and fraternal twin sons, Kaiis and Kian. When Jarrahy filed for divorce in 2018, Davis filed a petition in which she claimed that the two were never legally married. The actress has also founded the Geena Davis Institute, which aims to end unconscious gender bias in media...
