I'm a massive fan Geena Davis as an actress and just as the kickass human being she is, so I came into this predisposed to love it. There’s advice Dustin Hoffman gave you during the making of Tootsie for how to stave off sexual advances: To say, “Oh, I would love to—you’re very attractive—but I wouldn’t want to ruin the sexual tension between us. View image in fullscreen High achiever: Davis after winning the Oscar for best supporting actress for The Accidental Tourist in 1989. But I had read the book in college and I just loved the character of Muriel Pritchett and the Welsh corgi she trained, Edward.

It caused a lot of shame in me that that happened because I didn’t know what he was doing when he was touching me in that way. As someone who hates conflict and can also be guilty of “dying of politeness”, she’s inspired me to stand up for myself more, and surround myself by people who will listen to you and speak up for you. how could she possibly have sat there expressing opinions that didn't start with, "this is probably a stupid idea" or "i don't know what you'll think but"? But her growth to becoming this strong and resilient woman was a journey for her, which was unexpected.

For years, Davis fondly thought her mother didn’t know the correct way of spelling “Gina”; she was well into her 20s before her mother explained: “I didn’t want anyone to think it was pronounced ‘gina’. But once I had that experience, on day one of the movie, then everything about him after that was completely colored by knowing what lurks within. I liked how she didn't go into the nitty-gritty details of her failed relationships and affairs -- even the break-up with Renny Harlin that made news in the 90s just got two sentences that made it clear that it wasn't amicable and she wasn't still friends with him the way she was with many of her exes. You battled a handful of phobias in your childhood that caused you distress—everything from an irrational fear of dying from touching a poinsettia to being convinced you had breast cancer at 12. 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).

I think all those superstitions were a way to try to comfort myself: “Well, I won’t have to be so worried if this thing happens. She's interested in improving roles and representations of women in media, particularly television, film and animation.It felt like she was telling me a story instead of reading me her memoir, if that makes sense- like there was still a layer of holding back/presenting it just so rather than rawness and realness.

Audiobook, as narrated by the author: I mean, clearly Davis was going to read her own memoir…she’s fabulous.

I feel like she gave more pages to the background of her archery career than she did to the inception of the Geena Davis Institute (but truth, I didn’t know either existed until I read the book! You were often referred to in the industry as being “not conventionally pretty enough” or “too tall. High achiever: Davis after winning the Oscar for best supporting actress for The Accidental Tourist in 1989.

I’m constantly dropping things or tripping, eating Skittles compulsively, and you don’t realize until the end why I’m like that—and then you find out. She managed to tell some dark tidbits of her life without ever darkening the tone of the book which I realized is not easy for a lot of people to accomplish in their memoirs. Some of that self-belief evidently rubbed off; when the film roles dried up in her 40s, Davis took up archery and within a couple of years was ranked 29th in the US Olympic trials. But she didn’t explain what had happened or why it was bad to do the thing that he was doing, so it just felt like this horrible secret that I was carrying around.

While I like Geena Davis as an actress, she glossed over so much of what made her who she is today and how she got such big parts back in the 80s/90s, save for Thelma and Louise.