Geena Davis Quotes

If you do something and it proves to be a success, then people go 'get him to do that type of thing again, but only slightly different'. Either you do that or you go 'No! I want to play a leprous, lesbian dwarf from Guatemala!' But those parts just aren't coming to me.

I've always played characters that were younger than myself.

I never really thought about what characters I play. I always just wanted different characters.

I was worried for a while that it was some sort of reflection of me that all I seemed to be getting were these characters that were a tad bit loony. But I love it. Those are the most fun characters to play!

I hope it's not all I'll ever do, but I know I've played enigmatic characters. For me, the good characters are people who get places, are devious, are cunning and tricky and hard to pin down. Obviously, if you play one and you do an okay job of it, that'll be on people's minds.

I love playing odd roles.

I do play a lot of Southerners because I grew up in the South, but they're still diverse.

The protagonists that I've played tend to be people who make trouble. Or even if they don't make it, they certainly disrupt things. It's fun to do that in life as well. But I don't think I ever played myself.

Playing dysfunctional characters or crazy characters is only fun if they're well written. So I have been lucky enough to be asked to play crazy people who are very well written.

I've hardly ever played urban characters.

I've been playing a lot of really strong, able woman, but I think it would be really fun to play a crazy drug addict, or something.

I can't always pick and choose, but I try very hard to take the roles where they are a bit more human. Sometimes there's a hilarious thing that comes along and it might not be the most interesting character, but I'm just delighted to be able to do something.

Doing a film, or being sent scripts to look at a certain character, it's very odd for me. I tend to take it very personally.

When children ask me what's my favorite [role], I say to them, "Imagine having ten beautiful new puppies in a basket and you had to say which one is your favorite, and you simply couldn't because you love them all for different reasons." POPPINS was such a learning experience, as was THE SOUND OF MUSIC. I tell you, every one of them just helped me grow in what I do and did and each one was such a phenomenal working experience.

I always hope for roles that have some depth and that I can get my teeth into and that will challenge me, in some way.

There are two movies where I keep my clothes on. My parents will be very proud. They're challenging characters, which I'm excited about.

When I opened up in "Gaslight," for instance, playing that narky maid, that all came about from my experience and my training up to that point, and so nothing was wasted.

I was happy that I finally could play a mature woman, because I started working when I was a teenager and was always playing characters according to my age.

The thing I love about acting is getting to change and look at different people in different lives and do different projects.

I'm not somebody who takes stuff home with them, that if I shoot a scene and I'm personally impacted for days or something. I mean it certainly is affecting and everything, but it doesn't penetrate to some deeper layer. I'm in it when I'm in it.

Every actor, I don't care what they say, their roles are a lot more interesting than we are, and at the end of the day, it's still entertainment or fantasy. I think we can learn a lot from the characters we play and I find that the characters are even more noble than myself.

I was up at Big Sur with Christopher Reeve and Christine Lahti, doing this woman in a big fat-suit - Mrs. Bassett in Tennessee Williams' Summer And Smoke - and my husband was in the show too, playing Lahti's fiancée. Every night he'd be proposing to beautiful Christine Lahti, and I'd barrel onstage in this fat-suit. I hated it! But I did it, because by then I knew that that was my casting.

It's been liberating to be able to play someone who's a bada– or promiscuous, because that's the opposite of who I am … It's like a drug.

Roles that involved, whether it be training, whether it be physicality, getting skinny, there's some investment. There are roles that you do like that and sometimes there are roles that you do to make sure your family doesn't starve, but then you have to still say, "Is there something I can do with this? Can I do something with this that will be fair to the people watching it and fair to my time as well?" I'm at the point where that luxury of choice is getting more and more for me, absolutely, but it's more primarily roles that are more demanding of me in every way.

I honestly believe, and I've said it many times, that the universal stems from the specific and I can't walk around with a performance and ask everyone how they feel about it, but if noble is an opinion that people have I'll accept that. I've been asked many times why I don't play bad guys, or heavies, and I would do it, absolutely, in a second, just haven't been offered any so... if anybody has a script out there tonight I'm more than willing.