Boston Globe feature: Geena Davis on growing up in Wareham, attending BU, becoming a badass, and embracing feminism
The Oscar-winning actress discusses her memoir “Dying of Politeness”
Geena Davis and Tom Hanks on the set of “A League of Their Own.””DYING OF POLITENESS”/GEENA DAVIS (HARPER ONE)
Boston Globe feature: Geena Davis on growing up in Wareham, attending BU, becoming a badass, and embracing feminism
This article was first published in The Boston Globe on October 26, 2022. By Lauren Daley
Excerpt
Growing up in Wareham, Geena Davis was “so trained to be insanely polite that I learned to have no needs at all,” the Oscar-winning actress writes in her new memoir, “Dying of Politeness.”
She shares an anecdote early in the book from when she was 8. Her 99-year-old great-uncle Jack was veering in and out of the oncoming lane while driving.
“Still, not a peep from my parents. At the very last instant, with mere seconds before impact, [my great-aunt] Marion gently said, ‘A little to the right, Jack,’” Davis writes.
Her parents, native Vermonters long “dressed like it was the 1940s,” she writes. On the set of “A League of Their Own,” they were confused for extras.
Davis was “the weird tall kid.” At Wareham High, she was accepted, but was never “After School Popular, where you would hang out with other kids.”
Geena Davis served as marshal at the 250th anniversary parade for her hometown of Wareham.”DYING OF POLITENESS”/GEENA DAVIS (HARPER ONE)
Since age 3, she had one goal: to become an actor. She majored in theater at Boston University, but left before graduation. (She told interviewers for years that she had graduated in case her parents read the articles.)
Through acting, the polite New Englander broke bad.
“I kicked ass onscreen way before I did so in real life,” she writes. “The roles I’ve played have … helped transform me, slowly, in fits and starts, into someone of power.”
She spoke to the Globe by phone from New York.
Q&A
WITH GEENA DAVIS (CFA’79, Hon.’99)
The Boston Globe: So you’d wanted to be an actor since you were 3 years old.
Davis: Yeah, I have no idea what I saw or how I knew people could get that job at 3. It’s not like my parents talked it up to me — they were the furthest thing from showbiz you could possibly get. Somehow I latched onto the idea.
The Boston Globe: You went on to study at BU. How did you like it?
Davis: I loved BU. All of my lifelong friends are from BU. We’re still very close. I learned a lot. The only thing I didn’t learn was that if you want to be in movies, you should go to LA [not New York]. “Now, it’s a very robust program, but then it was all about getting into theater.”
The Boston Globe: You worked on losing your Cape Cod accent there.
Davis: My speech professor, around sophomore year, said, “You realize you’re going to have to lose that accent.” And I literally said, “What accent?” [laughs] And then I realized — I mean, once I lost it and visited my folks, I was like: “Wait a minute — you’ve always talked like this? I sounded like that?”