Dying of Politeness: A Memoir

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Where she shines is in the whole concept of the book - dying of politeness. Making yourself small because you're a woman and that's how your parents taught you to be. Don't be a bother. Don't pester people. Don't be too "big" for the room, even if you're six feet tall. Don't laugh too loud. How may of us in the same age group can identify? I know I can. Modeling helped Davis book her first acting gig, a part in the Academy Award-winning 1982 film Tootsie, which in turn opened many other doors. Davis says each of her films has taught her something — and she's no longer bogged down by that self-critical voice in her head.

After reading this memoir I'm planning on watching more of her movies...I'll probably give Thelma & Louise another try as well. Being diagnosed in her 40s with ADD, she says, was “very impactful”. “I thought there was something terribly wrong with me that I should be embarrassed about,” she says of her short attention span. And I didn’t want anybody to know, you know, that I had a character flaw... so it was a huge relief to find out that it was something that didn’t have to do with me being a failure, you know?” She talks about the “superpower” aspects of her condition. “It can be hard to focus but when you do focus, it’s like, the gears mesh, and you really can hyper focus and do it all day and all night. If I start doing something that I really am engaged in, I don’t know when to stop, I don’t know when to go to bed.” Geena Davis's memoir, Dying of Politeness: A Memoir, may not change the world, but Geena Davis is still fighting to change her world and become a bit more badass every day. Romances and relationships (and we know she had some high-profile ones) are glossed over, and that's fine. I don't care. She says what she needs to say and moves on. I had no idea she once dated Christopher McDonald, so that makes Thelma and Louis even more interesting.Recently, Davis, sixty-six, spoke to me from her home in Los Angeles about her “journey to badassery,” her iconic roles of the eighties and nineties, and the Hollywood double standard that she is battling with numbers. Our conversation has been edited and condensed. Galuppo, Mia (September 8, 2015). "Geena Davis, Adrien Brody to be Feted at San Diego Film Festival". The Hollywood Reporter . Retrieved October 27, 2023. Academy Award Winner. Humanitarian campaigner. Mensa member. Star of Beetlejuice, The Accidental Tourist and Thelma and Louise. Let me start by saying, I have loved Geena Davis ever since I was a little girl. I have no idea what movie I watched that initially launched this adoration, but I don't remember a time I ever didn't know who she was (although given my hyper-religious upbringing, I know for certain that isn't precisely the case). And that said, I have never seen "Thelma and Louise" (I know, I know, it's on the list), but I've loved "Fletch" and "Speechless" (I still think that movie is underrated) and "Beetlejuice" and "A League of Their Own" and a myriad of other movies that I'm forgetting right now. But "Long Kiss Goodnight" remains one of my all-time favorite action movies.

Working on Tootsie taught Davis a lot about the craft, as well as the logistics of moviemaking. For example, she recalls that she incorrectly assumed that everyone in the cast needed to be on set every day, so would arrive every morning and spend hours just watching other peoples' scenes. Her elaborate sequel ideas for films she was in were so fun and I wish some of them seen the light of day. That's what makes her later-in-life exploits with archery and her founding of a gender research institute interesting. Women and girls ARE under represented in films and television, and to me that's just as concerning and tragic as all the Me Too stuff. If we don't see ourselves as valuable and capable, what does that do to our society? Arts and Media/Movies/Big Box Office Loss". November 27, 2005. Archived from the original on November 27, 2005.

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Davis, top, with Susan Sarandon in 1991: ‘Susan has changed my life more than anyone I’ve ever known’. Photograph: Jerry de Wilde She’s been instrumental herself in changing the industry. It’s 18 years since she set up the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, gathering data on female representation on TV and in film. She became a mother in her late 40s to first a daughter and then twin boys. “I wanted to be more evolved before I had children,” she explains. It was while watching TV with her toddler daughter that she began to realise there was a serious issue with the shows they were watching which featured far more male characters than female ones. Your memoir is called “Dying of Politeness.” How did you learn politeness, and why is it so deadly? BETRAYED; Geena dumped hubby who got her secretary pregnant. - Free Online Library". www.thefreelibrary.com . Retrieved October 31, 2022. Geena Davis – Premi David di Donatello"[Geena Davis – David di Donatello Awards] (in Italian). Accademia del Cinema Italiano . Retrieved October 25, 2021.

In the television series The Exorcist (2016), based on the 1973 film of the same name, Davis took on the role of grown-up Regan MacNeil, who has renamed herself Angela Rance to find peace and anonymity from her ordeal as a child. The Exorcist was a success with critics and audiences. In 2017, Davis starred in the film adaptation Marjorie Prime, alongside Jon Hamm, playing the daughter of an 85-year old experiencing the first symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, [43] and appeared as the imaginary god of a heavyset 13-year-old girl in the comedy Don't Talk to Irene. Vanity Fair wrote that she stole "every scene" in Marjorie Prime, [44] while Variety, on her role in Don't Talk to Irene, remarked: "There's no arguing the preternatural coolness of Geena Davis—a fact celebrated in self-conscious fashion by Don't Talk to Irene, a familiar type of coming-of-age film whose most distinguishing feature is the presence of the actress". [45] You can tell something’s going on between them. They’re significant to each other. But this was a scene at night on a pitcher’s mound where we ended up kissing, and we realized that that can’t happen. Evidently, when they tested the movie, people just went nuts about that. Like, “We don’t want to see that.” Also, the original players who were advisers in the movie said, “Do not make it seem like we would sleep with somebody or would get romantically involved with somebody else when our husbands were at war. It’s wrong.” Thankfully, it was cut.VanHoose, Benjamin. "Geena Davis and Ex Reza Jarrahy Finalize Divorce, Agree to Change 17-Year-Old Twins' Last Names". Peoplemag. Dotdash Meredith Publishing . Retrieved February 4, 2023. Then, there’s her second career as what she calls a “middle-aged data geek.” In the early two-thousands, sidelined from Hollywood in her forties, she began wondering why the kids’ shows that she watched with her two-year-old daughter had so few female characters. Instead of taking her observations to the press, she sponsored an extensive research project that grew into the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, an organization that uses statistics to advocate for greater onscreen diversity and gender parity, and for which Davis has collected an honorary Oscar and, last month, an honorary Emmy. Handelman, Jay (March 10, 2011). "Sarasota Film Festival to honor Geena Davis". Sarasota Herald-Tribune . Retrieved October 26, 2021. a b Zauzmer, Emily (September 5, 2018). "Geena Davis Says She Was Never Legally Married". People . Retrieved September 6, 2018. Past Winners". Women in Film Los Angeles. Archived from the original on December 21, 2015 . Retrieved October 26, 2021.

Bill Murray should still be cancelled, regardless. But You should feel a little ashamed for trying to capitalize on your inability to return-volley his piggish folly! Davis launched the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media in 2007, [74] which works collaboratively with the entertainment industry to increase the presence of female characters in media aimed at children, and to reduce inequality in Hollywood and the stereotyping of females by the male-dominated industry. [75] For her work in this field she received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Bates College in May 2009; [76] and an honorary Oscar, the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 2019. [77]Exactly. If I thought I wasn’t being paid attention to, I could be very extroverted, like on my paper route. There was a section of it where there weren’t houses on either side, and when I hit that patch I would start to sing at the top of my lungs. And then the people in the next section would come out of their houses and peek down the hill and say, “What is taking so long? My papers should be here by now!”—and see me down there just bellowing songs. It was very embarrassing when I knew they knew. With her Massachusettsan frankness and her just-right humility, she detailed her life from beginning to now without ever lingering too long or going into extraneous detail. More importantly, especially for me, she never, ever got gossipy. On the other side of that, she delivered her memoir as a story relayed to an old friend with whom you’re just catching up. I enjoyed this memoir so much and hope she writes again. Khaleeli, Homa (February 29, 2016). "Geena Davis: 'The more TV a girl watches, the fewer options she thinks she has in life' ". The Guardian– via www.theguardian.com. When I started out, I’d hear that after forty you stop getting roles. But I was getting these giant roles, and I thought, Well, obviously that’s not going to happen to me. And so it was stunning to realize that it did. It was absolutely stunning and heartbreaking. It felt like forced retirement. I’d usually taken a year in between movies, more or less. But then two years, and then three years, was, like, unbelievable. I got “Stuart Little” and then “Stuart Little 2,” but other than that the work just dried up. It was incredibly painful.