She dazzled audiences in the 1980s with a rare, trailblazing talent, rising from modeling to becoming an Oscar-winning actress with stunning speed.
But behind the glamour and fame was a private battle—and a childhood moment when she came frighteningly close to death at just eight years old.
Amish-like upbringing
Few stars of the ’90s combined public affection and critical praise the way this actress did. With her famous dimples and commanding screen presence, she seemed like pure Hollywood magic, turning early roles into vivid proof of her raw ability from the start.
Born on January 21, 1958, in Wareham, Massachusetts, she sensed early that performing was where she belonged.
“I was three years old, and how I even knew it was a job, I have no idea, because we were only allowed to watch Disney movies, which were animated.”
Her parents, Bill and Lucille, were practical and old-fashioned—so much so that she once joked they “would have been Amish had they heard of being Amish.”
She and her older brother, Dan, were raised with a strong emphasis on politeness and proper conduct.
Reflecting on her New England childhood, she said, “My parents are both from Vermont, very old-fashioned New England. We heated our house with wood my father chopped. My mom grew all of our food. We were very underexposed to everything.”
When she almost died
Although she grew up sheltered and far from Hollywood’s spotlight, her childhood still held experiences that were genuinely terrifying.
She has shared that at age eight, she nearly died during a frightening car ride with her 99-year-old great-uncle Jack. As he drifted in and out of oncoming traffic, neither she nor her parents spoke up—even as a car sped toward them. At the last possible second, Jack corrected the car’s course, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision. The incident left her with a lesson that stayed with her: remain polite, even in moments when you should speak up.
That struggle—being too polite to protect yourself—became a central theme of her 2022 memoir, Dying of Politeness.
The horrible secret she was carrying around
In the book, she also revealed another deeply traumatic experience from her childhood: she was molested by a neighbor while delivering his newspaper.
Like many survivors, she said she did not fully grasp the seriousness of what happened until she was older.
“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. I didn’t know that it was wrong. I had no reaction to it, and then to see my mother’s reaction, [it was like], ‘Oh, my God, this was a big deal. I did something terribly wrong,” she told Vanity Fair.
Her mother confronted the neighbor, but no police report was filed.
“I knew that he was also to blame because she strolled up the street and told him never to touch me again and then told me never to go up the stairs to his apartment again. 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.”
“My big lesson in life was you can’t ever complain about anything,” she said.
“You can’t draw that kind of attention to yourself by complaining about something. So I didn’t talk about it, but I wanted to talk about it.”
Bullied by classmates
Another defining part of her youth was her height. In high school, she was the tallest girl in her class—a fact that, instead of making her feel confident, often damaged her self-esteem.
“They always wanted me on the basketball team, but I wasn’t too good,” she told The Chilliwack Progress in 1985. “Track was my thing. I did high jumps and hurdles on the girls’ team. But it was hopeless if you were taller than everybody else.”
“I was tall from minute one,” she later told The View. “I was very self-conscious and shy, and the last thing I wanted to do was stand out, and yet, every minute, I stood out.”
The teasing made it worse.
“The boys’ nickname for me in high school was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, which, you know, is so charming,” she recalled, referencing the Lakers legend.
Outside athletics, she played flute in the marching band. During her senior year, she studied abroad in Sweden and became fluent in the language.
She first attended New England College in New Hampshire, then transferred to Boston University to study drama. Her parents supported the decision without hesitation.
“I think they knew so little about it, and it would be incredibly rare and freaky if I was able to have a successful career,” she told The Gentle Woman.
She also shared an unexpected detail: she never told her parents she did not graduate college, even though Wikipedia had listed it as true for years.
“They never knew the truth before they passed away,” she said.
Model for Victoria’s Secret
In 1977, she moved to New York City and worked as a window mannequin, sales clerk, and waitress while building her modeling career. That effort paid off when she signed with the Zoli Agency and appeared in the famous Victoria’s Secret catalog—an opportunity that ultimately opened a path into Hollywood.
“I knew I wanted to be in movies, as opposed to theater,” she told NPR.
“I decided that I would try becoming a model first because, at that time, Christie Brinkley and Lauren Hutton were being offered parts in movies. And I thought, OK, well, I’ll just become a model, and then they’ll just offer me parts because obviously, it’s so much easier to become a supermodel.
It ultimately all worked out for me, but the likelihood of becoming a famous model was actually pretty slim, and I didn’t. I did get work, and it was through my model agency that I got my first acting job.”
Her breakthrough arrived when legendary director Sydney Pollack noticed her in the catalog and cast her in the 1982 film Tootsie, launching the kind of career that would help define an era. Acting alongside Dustin Hoffman, she earned strong reviews and soon moved to Los Angeles, where her momentum grew rapidly.
From that point on, more filmmakers sought her out, and her name became increasingly familiar to the public.
Her name? Geena Davis.
In 1983, she starred in the critically praised TV series Buffalo Bill, followed by her own series, Sara, in 1985. After that show was canceled, she pivoted more fully to film. She appeared in the 1985 movie Transylvania 6-5000 with Jeff Goldblum, though it struggled at the box office.
Thelma & Louise
A year later, the two reunited for the now-classic 1986 horror film The Fly, a major turning point in her career.
Her rise continued with a standout part in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice in 1988. The next year, she starred in The Accidental Tourist, a film that earned four Academy Award nominations. Her performance won her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, cementing her status as one of Hollywood’s leading talents.
Still, her most famous role remains Thelma & Louise. Directed by Ridley Scott, the groundbreaking feminist film also led to a defining friendship that helped Davis learn to speak up for herself. Her bond with co-star Susan Sarandon—her on-screen partner-in-crime—proved especially influential.
Davis has described Sarandon as someone who “very simply and clearly said what she thought.” After Thelma & Louise, Davis took on A League of Their Own, strengthening her reputation as a defining figure in women-centered cinema.
She said the reaction to those films was so “surprising and significant” that it highlighted how uncommon it still was to see movies made by women, for women.
At the peak of her fame, she was praised not only for her beauty, but also for the intelligence and depth she brought to every role.
“People always ask, ‘Do you think you’re beautiful?’ What am I going to say?” she told Vogue in 1992, adding, “But when I see myself in a movie, I sometimes think, Oh, that’s really nice. I look good.”
One part of Hollywood she openly enjoyed was dressing up for major events. Not long after Thelma & Louise, she made an unforgettable Oscars appearance in a dramatic Bo-Peep–inspired gown with a long train.
“I’m just from this small town, and I’m actually going to the Oscars. Of course I want to wear something glamorous,” Davis said, noting how distant that world felt from the one she grew up in. She also remembered that her parents lived simply—and that “the only makeup my mother wore was red lipstick.”
But as she approached 40, a familiar shift many actors face began to unfold.
“I fell off the cliff,” she told The Guardian in 2020.
“The great roles were incredibly scarce. It was a big difference.”
Married four times
Even if the industry allowed a major talent to drift from the spotlight, her influence remained. And as her career stopped moving in a straight upward line, other parts of her life became far more important.
Davis has been married four times, including to her The Fly co-star Jeff Goldblum. She became a mother for the first time at 46. Now 69, she is the mother of three: daughter Alizeh, 23, and fraternal twin sons, Kaiis and Kian, 19.
With her fourth husband, plastic surgeon Reza Jarrahy, Davis fulfilled her dream of becoming a mother. They met at a party and became friends, though Davis hesitated to pursue a relationship with him because he was 27 at the time—15 years younger than she was. She admitted:
“At first, to be honest, I was just approaching it like something that would be fun. I wasn’t thinking too far ahead of the game.”
As they spent more time together, she fell in love with Jarrahy, who became her fourth husband and the father of her children. They married in 2001 and welcomed their first child, Alizeh, in 2002.
Mom in mid-forties
Having a child in her mid-forties came with challenges, and Davis has never publicly shared details about her pregnancy or whether she used IVF, as many older celebrity mothers do.
In 2004, she gave birth to twin boys, Kaiis and Kian, and said her biggest concern was raising three children under the age of three.
She also admitted another fear: that she could never love anyone as much as she loved her daughter—until she met her sons.
Unlike many famous parents, Davis has not pushed any of her children toward acting.
She is especially protective of her daughter, stressing that she does not want her exposed to an industry where women can be exploited and objectified.
Still, Alizeh may follow a creative path. Her LinkedIn profile shows she is studying at the University of Southern California, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in music industry and cinematic arts.
As her children grew, they also shaped how Davis viewed Hollywood. When her kids were toddlers, she noticed gender inequality in film and television and chose to confront it directly, founding the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media in 2004. Today, she remains a prominent advocate for equality in entertainment, noting that 96% of films are directed by men.
The Thelma & Louise star emphasizes that this is not because women lack talent, but because the system is dominated by men.
Geena Davis today
Now 69, Davis continues to work as an actress.
She is set to appear in the Duffer Brothers’ upcoming Netflix supernatural mystery, The Boroughs. According to Deadline, the series “is set in a seemingly picturesque retirement community where a group of unlikely heroes must band together to stop an otherworldly threat from stealing the one thing they don’t have… time.”
