The Champion

After nearly four decades of challenging gender norms onscreen, GEENA DAVIS is fighting to level the playing field for all women in Hollywood

- Christine Lennon

When Geena Davis walks into a Santa Monica restaurant in a striped sweater, jeans, and Givenchy motorcycle boots, the sun reflecting off the Pacific through the massive windows behind her, one is tempted to check for desert dust or a trace of her famed character Thelma Dickinson still lingering 28 years later. Since 1991, when she and Susan Sarandon clasped hands in the front seat of a vintage Ford Thunderbird convertible for the final scene of Thelma & Louise and immortalized their characters as badass feminist antiheroes, she has led the conversation on gender parity in Hollywood.

“The press was saying, ‘This will change everything [for women],’ ” says Davis, 63, whose lithe 6-foot frame is decidedly dust-free. As soon as the Ridley Scott–directed movie was released, it was clear it was destined to become a classic—make that the classic—female road-trip movie. But the expectation was that it would be the first of many.

“The next film I made,” Davis adds, “was A League of Their Own, and everyone said the same thing.” As Dottie Hinson, the fictional star of the World War II–era professional baseball league, she sparked even more cultural dialogue on girls and sports, speaking to young women who were raised as Title IX athletes.

“I was just sitting back waiting for more, thinking, ‘Let’s go! I’m ready!’ [But] it didn’t change things for women. I got sucked into the idea that it would, but we’re still not there yet.”

Not one to wait around, Davis founded the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media in 2004 to speed the conversation along a bit. And since then, the institute’s studies have confirmed the shocking gender inequalities that have plagued Hollywood for years, both on television and in film.