Geena Davis has won an honorary Oscar for her work in promoting the representation of women and girls in child entertainment through the Geena Davis Institute for Gender in Media. The history of the sector of sexism, stereotypes and double standards is a subject she is all too familiar with because she had raised her own acting abilities once she was 40 years old.
“[Once I had] a quarter before my age I fell off the cliff, ”says the actress, now 64, the FadHadley Freeman in a new interview. ‘I really did.
‘In the early stages of my career, I happily went along with the thinking,’ Meryl Streep, Jessica Lange and Sally Field, they all make these great woman-centric films. And I get these great roles, really tippy top roles, so things need to get better for women. ‘But all of a sudden, the big roles were incredibly tight. It was a big difference, ‘she adds.
Davis – who was name-checked this year in Brad Pitt’s Oscar acceptance speech as a thank you for helping his groundbreaking role as her lover in the groundbreaking job Thelma and Louise – recognizes the feeling that her biggest roles did not lead to the change in Hollywood that she had hoped would come.
‘Everyone said,’ Now we’ll have so many movies with women who are hers, ‘she says of Thelma and Louise, in which she starred opposite Susan Sarandon. And I was, ‘Hot dog! I’m into something that started to change. ‘ And then A bond of their own comes out and everyone says, ‘Now there will be so many women’s sports movies!’ And five years go by … It was a shock that absolutely nothing happened. ”
And while she admits she’s wearing plain lingerie for her first film role, in 1982 Tootsie, “Do not worry me” – “[director] Sydney Pollack said: ‘Why are you not nervous? It’s your first day on a movie set, you’re sitting in your underwear and there’s Dustin Hoffman, ” she recalls – other movie experiences were not so pleasant.
The Oscar winner for The casual tourist says that one director put her middle audition on his lap, and that she witnessed other incidents of sexual harassment on various sets. But speaking out was discouraged.
“You can say nothing because it will kill your career,” she says of the general attitude towards harassment, adding that, post- #MeToo, “people can really talk about it now. It’s like night and day and it’s great. ”
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