Virginia Elizabeth "Geena"
Davis (born
January 21, 1956) is an American actress, activist, producer, and former model. She is the recipient of an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, and
has been nominated for a British Academy Film Award and
a Primetime Emmy Award. In
2019, she received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian
Award for her work fighting gender bias on and off-screen in Hollywood. Having
graduated with a bachelor's degree in
drama from Boston University, Davis
made her acting debut in the film Tootsie (1982) and eventually starred in the
thriller The Fly (1986),
which proved to be one of her first box office hits. While the fantasy
comedy Beetlejuice (1988) brought her to
prominence, the drama The Accidental Tourist (1988)
earned her the Academy
Award for Best Supporting Actress. She established herself as a
leading lady with the road film Thelma & Louise (1991), for which she received a
nomination for the Academy Award for Best
Actress, and the sports film A League of Their Own (1992),
garnering a Golden Globe Award nomination. However, Davis's roles in the box
office failures Cutthroat Island (1995)
and The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996),
both directed by then-husband Renny Harlin, were followed by a lengthy break and downturn in
her career. Davis starred as the adoptive mother of the titular character in
the Stuart Little franchise (1999–2005) and as the first female
president of the United States in the television series Commander in Chief (2005–2006),
winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama for
her role in the latter. Her later films include Accidents Happen (2009) and Marjorie Prime (2017). She has portrayed the
recurring role of Dr. Nicole Herman in Grey's Anatomy (2014–2015, 2018) and that of Regan MacNeil–Angela Rance in the first season of the horror
television series The Exorcist (2017).
In 2004, Davis launched the Geena Davis
Institute on Gender in Media, which works collaboratively with the
entertainment industry to dramatically increase the presence of female
characters in media. Through the organization, she launched the annual Bentonville Film Festival in
2015, and executive produced the documentary This Changes
Everything in 2018.