Geena Davis Quotes

I don't think I auditioned for 'Ghostbusters II'.

The ladder of success in Hollywood is usually a press agent, actor, director, producer, leading man; and you are a star if you sleep with each of them in that order. Crude, but true.

I have found that so many directors and producers in the room say nothing, and this can be deadly. It's very difficult to audition for comedy in the vacuum of a small room, but it's the only way most do it.

I can't even begin to tell you how many casting couches I was attacked on. Not just by casting people, but by stars.

I find there's this weird anger thing: Someone will approach me at the bar and say, 'Hey, can I buy you a drink?' And I'll say, 'No, I'm okay.' And then all of a sudden, there's this male anger flip, where they go, 'Oh, you know what? I wasn't even gonna buy you a drink, 'cause you're not even that cute anyway,' and walk away.

I have an agent and everything. I audition occasionally.

It's a terrible process, what you go through, during pilot season. All the shows turn themselves in and there is a good four to six weeks before you get phone call.

I went to Los Angeles, because I have a manager, and - I can't remember when, but we met in London maybe six months or a year beforehand, and he said, "Listen, if you really want to get a job out of L.A., you really need to come." And I was like, "Well, can't I send a tape or something?" And he was like, "No, no, you need to come."

Hollywood is a strange place. The class structure here is more rigid than almost anyplace I've ever experienced. It's made more difficult by the fact that it's constantly changing. You never know what class you belong to unless you're one of the two or three people that have been in the same echelon for a long, long time.

Pilot season is always crazy because you audition for a million things, and really, in the end, it's not up to you.

I didn't audition or anything like that. But I went into John Loganhis office... It was his screening room in his office, actually, and I sat and schmoozed with him for about two minutes, which I think is standard, and, y'know, we got on fine.

In a sense, sexual harassment lawsuits are just the latest version of the female selection process allowing her to select for men who care enough for her to put their career at risk; who have enough finesse to initiate without becoming a jerk and enough guts to initiate despite a potential lawsuit. In the past, though, the process of his overcoming her barriers was called 'courtship.' Now it is called either 'courtship' or 'sexual harassment'.

Not to bash Los Angeles, but there is always a feeling in LA of where your stock is. Are you the top of the heap at the moment or do you have the blockbuster, did you get cast in that thing?

I had to battle it out with all the usual suspects and whatnot and go to the callback. I was lucky that (writer-director) John (Levine) and I were sort of these two white-boy hip-hop-heads from New York. I think that alone got me in the door.

As an actor, Hollywood would be a horrible place to go if you weren't actually invited.

What he labels sexual, she labels harassment.

I started acting when I moved to California when I was nineteen. I started auditioning. I was waiting on my manager at the time. I was waiting on her table, and she sent me on an audition. From there, I just kept auditioning and, luckily, got parts.

Women and people of low birth are very hard to deal with. If you are friendly to them, they get out of hand, and if you keep your distance, they resent it.

When we were trying to find the woman to play Maura Isles, it was a no-brainer when Sasha came in. We just knew it was her, and she did such a fantastic job. She got the job, right then and there, in the room, and it was great. We actually played a little joke on her. She's a great lady and we've had a really, really fantastic time.

One comment by a female lobbyist really shocked me. She said, "Washington is a contact sport." I asked, "What do you mean by that?" And she just said, "Well, it's all men - and they're very contact-y. They touch a lot." Women say that's just part of the game.

If people offer me decent roles in good films, of course I'll take it. But I just didn't like the actor lifestyle. You end up focusing all your energy on trying to get parts you don't even want.

Auditions are like a gamble. Most likely you won't get the part, but if you don't go, you'll never know if you could've got it.

It's a chain of accidents. When you step into Hollywood, you wind yourself into thousands of chains of accidents. If all of the thousands happen to come out exactly right-and the chance of that figures out to be one in eight million-then you'll be a star.

Whenever you hear somebody else is auditioning for something, you sort of assume they're going to get it. You should try to just ignore it. I don't find it very helpful to know who else is going up for stuff, generally.

I've never, ever, in my entire life, been upset at a casting choice.