Geena Davis Quotes

My whole theory about why I couldn’t find any creators who realized they were leaving out female characters is because they were raised on the same ratio. I just heard someone the other day call it either ‘smurfing’ a movie, which is when there’s one female character, or ‘minioning’ a movie, which is when there’s no female characters.

I think there are more female characters in videogames now but I also think that's because videogames in general are more diverse now.

For the most part, I was surprised by the representation of female characters onscreen. I do hope that when we include more female storytellers, we will have more of the women that I recognize in my day to day life.

I was always looking for the female characters in sci-fi and fantasy who were more than just the girlfriend.

The creators of kids' media had no idea they were leaving out that many female characters. They were in utter shock that the worlds they were creating were so bereft of female presences.

The most important thing in the job is to make movies about women where they are characters that have consequences in the story. They can be villains, they can be protagonists, I don't care but their movements, their actions what they do in the plot has to actually matter.

I just started asking my friends if they had noticed. None of them - feminists, mothers, daughters - noticed until I pointed it out. Then I decided to bring it up within the industry. I knew a lot of people, so I'd say, "Have you ever noticed how few female characters there are in kids movies?" when I met a director, a producer, whatever. And they said, "Oh, but that's not true anymore."

Because I had some roles that resonated with women, I immediately noticed that there were far more male characters than female characters in what we're showing little kids in the 21st century, which was stunning to me. But I couldn't find anybody else who noticed.

I remember, the first time it struck me is I was an econ major at Stanford as an undergrad, and it struck me how few women were econ majors back in the '70s. And then in business school how few women... And even then, I thought, 'Gosh, this is really unfortunate.'

In major studio scripts, the girls are very similar. They're all witty and hot. I'm more of an oddball.

One of the things that we've tried to do with the 'Guardians' films is to allow the women to be full characters.

All the other characters are so well-rounded, and it's just frustrating because female characters aren't. It's not that they're badly written, they're just underwritten. They have no internal monologues; they could be absolutely anyone.

The absence of women within STEM programs is not only progressive, it is persistent - despite more than 20 years of programs intended to encourage the participation of girls and women.

I think, as you move to the upper ranks of science - ranks being positions of influence and access - you see fewer female faces. And I think the basic reason is the same reason that you don't see a lot of female faces in Congress or on the Supreme Court or on the directing board of Fortune 500 companies.

I am a woman, and I am proud to say that I work in technology. But I also recognise that the combination of those two facts puts me in the minority.

I prefer to avoid the phrase 'strong women' when talking about female characters and the lack thereof or the need therefore, because it's not about being strong, it's also about being vulnerable, funny etc.

Why shouldn't there be more epic, brilliant female characters onscreen?

A lot of times when I play a show, I'm the only girl on the bill. We're a minority, for sure.

Just like how male actors get to play varied characters, I would also like to play characters that people don't normally see female characters portraying on screen.

As a woman, I don't feel like I have a responsibility to create better female characters. I feel like I have a responsibility to create good characters. Because the truth is, those kinds of things ghettoize us even more as writers.

When I was thinking about these women characters, no matter how bad a person I am - a bad writer, my limitations, my sexism, you know - the thought was, it would be useful as a writer to try to create a template for all the male writers, especially Dominican male writers, especially males of color, of how a writer can use seeing to create more nuanced representations of women.

I love playing different characters. I just do. I want to play even more quirky and interesting characters and just something that people wouldn't automatically think that I would be. I want to go against the grain a bit and I'm hoping people will be open-minded enough to cast me in stuff that's going against the grain.

I like to keep a broad scope and read lots of different things with lots of different types of characters. Doing that is going to help develop me as an actor; you push yourself.

I have a little sister, and I'm constantly annoyed [by] how terribly written most females are in most everything - and especially in comedy. Their anatomy seems to be the only defining aspect of their character, and I just find that untrustful and it straight-up offends me.

My daughter was a toddler. I had no idea there was anything wrong with kids' media.I started watching little preschool shows with her or G-rated videos or whatever; I couldn't believe what I was seeing, that there seemed to be far more male characters than female characters in what we make for little kids. It was just a shock.