Geena Davis Quotes - Page 2

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.

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].

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.

Are you stupid or did you just take lessons?

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.

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

My parents are both from Vermont, very old-fashioned New England. We heated our house with wood my father chopped. My mom grew all of our food. We were very underexposed to everything.

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

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.

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

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 was really lucky that I had an aunt who was very inspiring to me. She was different than anybody in my family on either side.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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 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 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.