Failure Throwback: Geena Davis

The final episode in our run of throwback episodes is the one and only Geena Davis - this one went out on 9th November 2022. This is what I wrote at the time: I am obsessed with today's guest and I'm not even going to pretend otherwise. Geena Davis, the star of such seminal movies as Tootsie, Beetlejuice, Thelma & Louise, A League of Their Own and the underrated classic, The Long Kiss Goodnight, TURNED UP AT MY ACTUAL HOUSE to record a witty, warm and fascinating conversation.* We talk about her feelings of imposter syndrome and self-doubt in the early days of her career, the fact that her failure as a model led to her first film role alongside Dustin Hoffman (who gave her incredible advice on how to defend herself against the amorous advances of her male co-stars) and the revelation of being diagnosed with ADD in her 40s. Along the way, we touch on height (she's 6ft! A tall woman like me!), the #MeToo movement, representation, almost becoming an Olympic archer, being an older mother and the seismic impact her friendship with Susan Sarandon had on Davis's life. I can't wait for you all to listen. *yes, she met my ginger cat Huxley and they got along famously. HOW TO FAIL PRESENTED BY HAYU LIVE TOUR tickets: www.fane.co.uk/how-to-fail Have something to share of your own? I'd love to hear from you! Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Elizabeth Day?

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• 0:45Elizabeth Day?

  to start your free trial. That's Shopify.co.uk/fail. Go to Shopify.co.uk/fail today to hear your first...

• 1:07Elizabeth Day?

  Hello, lovely listeners. Here is the last of my specially curated episodes from my archive, especially for you. Today, it's the irrepressible Gina Davis. I love this episode because she opens up for one of the first times about what it was like being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, and also because she came to my house for the recording and my cat, Huxley, took an instant shine to her. And as I said to her at the time, I think it's because they share a certain colouring. She has a reddish tint to her hair, and so does he. Thanks so much for listening, and I hope you love it as much as I and Huxley did.

• 1:48Elizabeth Day?

  Gina Davis is not your conventional Hollywood movie star. First off, she's tall, and as we know, most celebrities are absolutely tiny. Then there's the fact she speaks fluent Swedish and almost competed in the Olympics as part of the US archery team. She once decorated a guest bedroom with 50 cuckoo clocks. And as an actor, she's played a woman whose boyfriend was transformed into a fly and the adoptive mother of an animated mouse. In her 40s, she launched an institute to call for greater diversity and gender parity on screen, which saw her collect an honorary Oscar and Emmy. Born and raised in Massachusetts, she studied drama at Boston University and after failing

• 2:30Elizabeth Day?

  to graduate, found work as a model in New York, which eventually led to her being cast in her first movie role in Tootsie alongside Dustin Hoffman. The Fly and Beetlejuice followed. Davis won an Academy Award for her part in The Accidental Tourist in 1988, but arguably it was her performances in Thelma and Louise and A League of Their Own that would leave their mark on generations of women to come, myself included. Her witty and revealing new memoir, Dying of Politeness, has just been published. In it, she writes, "My whole life, I couldn't bear the idea that I'd be caught out not knowing how to do something. In many, many cases, I've just pretended like I already knew how to do something in

• 3:15Elizabeth Day?

  case it was shameful not to know how to do whatever it was." Gina Davis, welcome to How to Fail.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Thank you, thank you so much.

• 3:25Elizabeth Day?

  I'm so excited to have you here.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:28Elizabeth Day?

  And I had to cut down the introduction because there was so much I wanted to say and I was like, no, we need to get to the actual interview. But one of the things I didn't mention was how much I absolutely love The Long Kiss Goodnight. It's one of my favourite movies of all time.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Thank you, me too.

• 3:41Elizabeth Day?

  And you basically play a female Jason Bourne in that before Jason Bourne was even a twinkle in anyone's eye.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 3:47Elizabeth Day?

  So I loved it. And you were a badass assassin and you did most of your own stunts, didn't you?

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, I did, I did.

• 3:55Elizabeth Day?

  And is that what you mean when you said that quote there, that idea of faking it till you make it? As actors, you often ask things like, oh, can you ride a horse? And did you often say yes, even if you couldn't?

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I, well, I sort of had this philosophy that I could learn pretty much anything that was needed. And fortunately, I got a lot of parts where I had to have some skill that I didn't have. And so for Long Kiss Goodnight, I studied Taekwondo and I had to learn ice skating because there's a scene where I'm killing people on ice and then pistol shooting, of course, and all that. And then I had to learn sword fighting and horseback riding for Cuthbert Allen. So I've had to learn a lot of skills.

• 4:37Elizabeth Day?

  And baseball for a league.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  And baseball, yes, that was the big one.

• 4:40Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was the first time I had to learn a real skill for a role.

• 4:45Elizabeth Day?

  And did it teach you that your capacity was greater than you might have thought for learning new things?

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely, especially sports, especially physical things, because growing up so tall, I call it being physically shy. I didn't want to do things that would cause people to, you know, that would attract even more attention. I was busy trying to be, take up less space in the world, and so I wasn't on the girls' basketball team or anything like that. And I assumed that I was probably uncoordinated. But when I had to learn baseball for that movie, all of a sudden, it was like, I mean, the coaches were saying, wow, you have, you're really gifted athletically. And I was, oh my God, I did not know this. So it was incredible.

• 5:27Elizabeth Day?

  This whole other side to you that you discovered as an adult, it's wonderful. That idea of being scared to take up too much space is a recurring theme throughout your brilliant memoir, Dying of Politeness, which, as it says on the tin, is about the fact that you, I hope I'm not overstepping here, but that you're an inveterate people pleaser, and it was more important for you to be polite than actually to say how you felt.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:53Elizabeth Day?

  And there are lots of examples of that during the book.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:56Elizabeth Day?

  But one of the funniest and also the most terrifying comes when you're about eight years old and you're in a car. Will you tell us that story?

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Right, well, that's when I came very close to literally dying of politeness. I was in my great uncle's car with my parents, we were in the backseat, and great uncle Jack and great aunt Marion were in the front, and 99-year-old Uncle Jack was driving at night. And that didn't work out very well, as you can imagine. It was thankfully a nearly empty road and very narrow, and he kept veering into the oncoming traffic lane and then veering back into our lane. And my parents didn't say anything about this, didn't say, hey, you know, Jack, maybe I should drive, or nothing like that. So then, eventually, a car was coming on the other side in the other direction, and he veered into their lane.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  And there was nowhere for them to go to get away from us, because it was so narrow. But my parents still said nothing. And we were going to have a head-on collision with this car, and at the last instant, Marion said, a little to the right, Jack. And he just veered over to the right and they zoomed past us with like inches of clearance. And so I only later realized they would have rather died than say anything. Forget about saying, oh, my God, you're going to kill us, pull over. My dad could have said, little to the right, Jack, you know, politely. But that was too much. That was too much.

• 7:27Elizabeth Day?

  It's fascinating because I know that you have a brother.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:30Elizabeth Day?

  Dan, but I wonder whether you feel that this expectation of politeness and pliability is a gendered thing. Is it more expected of women than men?

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Well, I can only talk about my family, but it was expected of Dan as well. My dad was insanely polite and kind and generous and would never ask for anything. You know, and I was taught to never, basically never have needs, never ask for anything. Or that the point was to not be trouble to someone else, more than just being polite by saying please and thank you. It was about being utterly self-effacing. Like, I don't have any needs. I'm not hungry. Don't feel you have to put yourself out for me. Was the idea.

• 8:14Elizabeth Day?

  And I will do whatever I can to meet your needs, person asking me. Yeah.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:20Elizabeth Day?

  So then how does that translate later on in the movie industry? Because I know that you've had experiences with men who have asked things of you, where you haven't always felt that you can stand up for yourself. And by the way, if I were a Hollywood superstar, one can only dream, I would have been exactly the same.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 8:39Elizabeth Day?

  It's so hard to do in the moment.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Right, right. Because the whole thing is about wanting to get jobs, wanting, you know, and feeling like people will, must like you in order to hire you and want to work with you. And I think in, in that circumstance, it is more incumbent upon women. The feeling that I have to be really nice and really cooperative and never cause any trouble or they won't hire me. But I don't think that male actors feel that as much as we do.

• 9:10Elizabeth Day?

  Tell us about Susan Sarandon in Thelma and Louise. Obviously, we have to talk about Thelma and Louise.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:16Elizabeth Day?

  And there was this moment where you knew you had things that you wanted to raise about the script with the director Ridley Scott.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:23Elizabeth Day?

  And you were thinking, oh, how can I best put this? And coming up with a litany of mitigating words.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 9:30Elizabeth Day?

  And then what happened?

• 9:31Speaker 01

  Yes, I planned very carefully about each little tiny thing that I wanted to bring up. I'll say this one as if I'm making a joke, but then he might think, hmm, but actually, that's a good point, you know, or I'll try to make him think this was his idea, you know, it was crazy. And then I met Susan Sarandon for the first time. I was blown away immediately just by her poise and presence. So we sit down and we're just going to page through the script and see if there's anything we want to talk about. And Susan immediately says, you know, this line, I think we should just cut it. And it sounds so innocuous, but to me, it was like, what just happened? She just started out, launched right in, saying, I want to cut a piece of the script.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  And I looked at Ridley, like, how's he going to react? And he just said, oh, yeah, actually, that's a good idea. Yeah, let's take that out. And I was like, what am I watching here?

• 10:23Elizabeth Day?

  What witchcraft?

• 10:25Speaker 01

  A different planet or something. And the whole afternoon was like that. And then the whole experience of shooting the movie was like that, to watch the way she very comfortably and naturally moved through the world to no one's shock or horror, you know, that that was the other part, was not only seeing her say what she thought easily and comfortably, but to see that people didn't fall over and react like, oh, my God, she's actually speaking her thoughts. Because I was so trained to never, never voice your opinion.

• 10:58Elizabeth Day?

  Did you ever have a conversation or have you had a conversation recently with Susan about how she got to be like that?

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Gosh, we must have, you know, in the beginning, 30 years ago, but I think it was that she was always like that. You know, she was the first born, I believe, and she just had always been like, I mean, you know, maybe it was her upbringing. Maybe, you know, in her family, that was completely normal.

• 11:21Elizabeth Day?

  You have always described yourself as a feminist, even when it was untrendy to do so. And I think for a lot of listeners, it will be shocking to hear that. But I remember this very vividly in the nineties and early two thousands to say if you were a woman in the public eye, that you were unapologetically feminist, people thought that that was quite shocking.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 11:40Elizabeth Day?

  And I remember I once had a female actor complain after I had written a piece about her in which I described her as feminist with all words that she had used. And she said, could you tone it down a bit because I want to sound a bit less feminist.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Oh, right.

• 11:55Elizabeth Day?

  Wild.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:56Elizabeth Day?

  Because times happily have changed. But my experience as a woman is that I feel more radicalised as a feminist, the older I get.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:04Elizabeth Day?

  Has that been your experience?

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. You know, I worked with Polly Bergen, was very well known back in the day. She played my mother on something and she was about eighty. And I couldn't believe how she behaved on set, was so salty and making like such vulgar remarks and, you know, just saying all this stuff. And I said, wow, you really just, whatever you feel like saying, you say. She said, honey, when you get to be my age, you don't give me shit. So I was like, all right, then when I get to be that age, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna let loose also. But yeah, definitely, definitely, you get, you know, you just experience it more and it builds up.

• 12:42Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah. And has that been your experience of aging? Has it been liberating for you rather than anything else?

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, definitely. I feel like every year that goes by, I feel more like myself. You know, there's, there's less need to try to convince everybody that I'm the nicest person in the world and all that kind of stuff, yeah.

• 13:01Elizabeth Day?

  Well, you are very nice and very delightful and you don't even need to try with me, Jean. This podcast is obviously all about failure. And in popular culture, there is a very, very visible symbol of what seems to be success, which is winning an Oscar.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 13:19Elizabeth Day?

  You are one of the rare people who has actually won an Oscar and I can ask this question of. What does it feel like? Does it genuinely feel like a wholehearted success and does that feeling last?

• 13:31Speaker 01

  It did. I didn't even think about what it would feel like. I certainly didn't expect it to happen so early, but yes, it made me feel really good, you know? The reaction for me was, well, partly it was, okay, I got that out of the way, you know, like, I don't have to spend decades wondering if I'll ever get an Oscar because, you know, I did that early, so I don't have to worry about that. But also, like, it was validating, it really was.

• 13:58Elizabeth Day?

  You felt seen?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:00Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah. That theme of visibility recurs throughout your career because the Gina Davis Institute, which I mentioned in the introduction, has done phenomenal amounts of work for the visibility of women on screen. And I would love just to hear from you a little bit about that work, and specifically, how powerful it is when we see ourselves represented on screen.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Right, absolutely. It started because I became aware, suddenly when I had a little daughter, I became aware of this giant gender imbalance in the TV shows and videos and things made for little kids, for the youngest kids. And I couldn't believe it. I was absolutely stunned. I figured, I mean, I knew there was terrific gender imbalance in the industry, but I just assumed that kids' things would at least be balanced, you know, because they're supposed to be educational and well-thought-out and all that. And so I was kind of horrified, and it made me think, wait a minute. So, we all have this unconscious gender bias,

• 15:06Speaker 01

  and we're teaching kids from the beginning to have it. If we're showing boys and girls that girls take up less space and don't do as many interesting and important things, then the message just sinks in. So that's what spurred me to originally start to launch the institute. And my firm belief was, not only if we change what kids see from the beginning, it will lessen this gender discrimination, but if we show kids somebody that looks like them doing something interesting or important, they'll say, wait a minute, I can do that, too. And also, not only will it have that impact on girls, but boys will say, oh, I think girls can do that, too, instead of being like, what, girls can't

• 15:51Speaker 01

  do that? Only boys can do it. So, and it's absolutely true. We've proven it with all kinds of research, that if it happens on screen, it will happen in real life.

• 16:01Elizabeth Day?

  That's what I love as a kind of data geek. It is so fascinating. So the popularity of The Hunger Games, there was a direct correlation in terms of girls taking up archery.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Yes, we studied that.

• 16:13Elizabeth Day?

  It's so, and the CSI thing?

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 16:16Elizabeth Day?

  Which is that forensic science, there are loads of women who pursue it because of CSI.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Right, it's called the CSI effect, actually.

• 16:23Elizabeth Day?

  And tell us about the Commander in Chief effect.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Yes, well, so unfortunately, my administration was very short. I really wanted two terms out of it, but I didn't get that. But.

• 16:34Elizabeth Day?

  This is you playing a female president.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  The first female president of the United States.

• 16:39Elizabeth Day?

  In the TV series, yeah.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Yes, and there was a survey done after the show was on, and it found that people were 58% more likely to vote for a female president than before the show. So just one show with one character and it had that much impact. It didn't, I'm sure it didn't last because, you know, you need to be reminded. It normalizes things. If you see it on the screen, it becomes normalized.

• 17:07Elizabeth Day?

  And you know, if Commander in Chief had still been running when Hillary Clinton stood for election, then who knows what might have happened?

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's true.

• 17:13Elizabeth Day?

  Instead, we became familiarized with Donald Trump through The Apprentice. And so we started thinking of him as our like crazy uncle at the wedding, who seems familiar but ultimately deranged. It's my reading.

• 17:25Elizabeth Day?

  Okay, so before we get on to your failures, I just wanted to say, I salute you for being so gracious about all of your exes in your memoir.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you.

• 17:36Elizabeth Day?

  You are very nice and very kind about them. And I was like, man, that is a grown woman, because I'm a terrible grudge bearer.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Oh, I see.

• 17:46Elizabeth Day?

  And I definitely feel like if I'd written this kind of memoir, I'd have settled some old scores.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, yeah, I didn't want to do that, no.

• 17:54Elizabeth Day?

  Let's get on to your failures. So your first.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Assuming I have some, evidently, I guess.

• 18:01Elizabeth Day?

  I know, it's a difficult thing for you to do.

• 18:05Elizabeth Day?

  Your first failure, and I'm so glad you've chosen this, having read about it in Dying of Politeness, is this school exchange to Sweden that you went on.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:14Elizabeth Day?

  So what happened?

• 18:15Speaker 01

  So, my junior year in high school, the school announced that they were going to start a foreign exchange program, and did anybody want to apply? And I immediately desperately wanted to do that. I'd never even heard of it before, but I think it was that I would have a chance to reinvent myself early, instead of waiting till I go away to college or something, because I just felt like I was carrying this burden of being a little bit of a weirdo, and I had, you know, I made all my clothes, and I just didn't fit in exactly. I mean, kids liked me, but I wasn't, I think I was viewed as a little bit odd. And I think I thought, if I go somewhere else, they won't know that about me, they

• 18:58Speaker 01

  won't have grown up with me, and maybe, you know, they will perceive me differently. So I immediately convinced my parents to see if we could afford to do that. And the only option they gave me, as far as where to go, was Sweden. They had a family in Sweden that was interested in having someone come there. So I was like, great, absolutely. Where is that? What are they, okay. I mean, Sweden had never even entered my consciousness, but I was gonna go there for a year. Anyway, I get on the plane, and I'm waving goodbye to my parents at the airport, you know, and I suddenly realized, hang on. So in other words, I'm not gonna see a single person I know for a year.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  And so before it even left the ground, I was like, I've made a horrible mistake! And I got there, called my parents to tell them I got there safely, but all I could say was, I've made a horrible mistake, I have to come home immediately. On the next plane, can you find out when the next plane is? And they were like, well, no, come on, stick it out. So that was horrifying. And then two days later, I started Swedish high school. They, two days, only two days after I got there, and suddenly realized, oh, high school is in Swedish! It's like, how could I never have thought, plus, how could the organizers of this thing never have thought about what exactly is gonna happen?

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Because I just, I'm sitting there in class, that's in Swedish, I'm thinking, what am I supposed to do? I asked the teacher after the class, what, do you know what I'm supposed to do? She was like, I just don't know, I can't, I can't teach in English, you know, just for you. So I had to learn it very fast.

• 20:41Elizabeth Day?

  So you were seventeen, is that right?

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:44Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah, okay. And this is an era before mobile phones, before the internet?

• 20:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, no, before any of that, right.

• 20:51Elizabeth Day?

  So your communication with your parents was via letter and the occasional phone call, landline call?

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, just on holiday, like Christmas and my birthday.

• 20:59Elizabeth Day?

  So, I mean, talk us through those first few weeks of how you felt.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Oh, I was so homesick and so weirded out, you know, about, I just felt lost, like, what am I supposed to do here? How am I gonna make this work? But I asked somebody, what's the homework? And I would look up every single word in the dictionary and like translate the textbook. And it started classes in the evenings and the family talked Swedish to me a lot and taught me words, but it was utter total immersion.

• 21:36Elizabeth Day?

  But it's, and also, it's totally different. Swedish is not an easy language to learn, it's so phenomenally different. And the culture of Sweden is different, even the, the weather is different, everything is very ancient. The closest comparison I have in my own life, which is by no means a direct comparison, is that I was sent to Russia as a twelve-year-old for a month.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  No, you weren't, really?

• 21:59Elizabeth Day?

  Yes, in nineteen ninety.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  What was the idea?

• 22:02Elizabeth Day?

  So I had, you see, I had been learning Russian at school. I went to school in the north of Ireland and bizarrely, this school taught Russian, and I thought, that sounds cool. So I signed up to learn Russian, but I'd only been doing it for a weekly lesson. For a few months.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:16Elizabeth Day?

  And my parents, who are adventurous spirits and great believers in the power of language.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 22:23Elizabeth Day?

  Thought, oh, wonderful idea. We'll send her to Russia with a family. And I so related to the bit in your book where you arrive and you suddenly like, oh my goodness, this is so different.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:35Elizabeth Day?

  I was on the top floor of a tower block. And I hardly had any words at my disposal. And the one thing that I do remember is they showed me around the rooms and I kept saying it's vskusnya, vskusnya, because I thought that meant lovely. Actually, it means delicious. So I was basically just saying, oh, this bedroom is delicious. Thank you so much.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Oh, that's so cute.

• 22:56Elizabeth Day?

  But like you, the only means of contact I have with my parents is letters.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:00Elizabeth Day?

  And I don't know whether you feel this, but I sometimes still have bad dreams, like nightmares. Where I think I'm back and it's my first morning in Russia and I've just woken up and the knowledge has suddenly settled around my shoulders that I'm actually so far away from home.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Right, right. No, I haven't had those kind of dreams, but I can understand, yeah.

• 23:20Elizabeth Day?

  Now, I came back fluent in Russian, so I imagine that you're completely fluent in Swedish.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's so long ago now. It was, you know, seventy four. But yeah, it's stuck in my hard drive somehow.

• 23:32Elizabeth Day?

  So when did it turn around for you? Because I know that it ended up being a positive experience.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. Well, within about two months, I could understand most of what people were saying. I could get along, you know, and and start to understand what the teachers were saying and all that. And by Christmas, I pretty much could read the textbooks and say whatever I needed to say. By January, I was dreaming in Swedish. I was, I, I learned to, probably this is like with Russian, but I learned to think in Swedish, like I didn't have to translate anymore. And I still can think in Swedish.

• 24:07Elizabeth Day?

  So cool.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Isn't it interesting?

• 24:09Elizabeth Day?

  Yes. My best friend is half Swedish.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  Really?

• 24:12Elizabeth Day?

  Yes. And she believes she's very shaped by the sort of Swedish psychology.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 24:16Elizabeth Day?

  Because they, my understanding from her is that they have a different way of metabolizing emotions. Where sometimes they just won't have the emotion. They'll go and bury it in the forest, is what she always says.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting.

• 24:28Elizabeth Day?

  But I wonder how much the Swedish national character, if there is such a thing, affected you. Did it make you think about yourself differently or life differently?

• 24:37Speaker 01

  I can't say that I noticed. That as much as that speaking a different language, I I feel like a different person when I'm speaking Swedish a little bit because I guess it's a different part of my brain or something, but that person is was always more confident and yeah, I don't know, it had we had a very good impact on me overall, very much so, yeah.

• 25:01Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah. And also, when you're speaking a foreign language, people don't have a set of prejudices or assumptions attached to your accent.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:09Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Right, right. Although I picked up Swedish with the accent of the local area that I was from, because when I meet people and have a conversation with them, they say, where did you live? And I say, Sanjiken. And they're like, you sound like you're from there. Yeah, which is interesting.

• 25:28Elizabeth Day?

  Are you big in Scandinavia? They must love you there.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  I guess, yeah, yeah. Also, I married a Finn, Reddy Harland, so I have, yeah, a whole connection with Scandinavia.

• 25:38Elizabeth Day?

  And would you ever star in a Scandinavian noir?

• 25:42Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. I all I want to do is be in a movie in Swedish, because who gets to act in a different language? I think it's pretty rare, and I would love to do that. Yeah.

• 25:54Elizabeth Day?

  I would love you to do that.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:55Elizabeth Day?

  Do you watch Scandi box sets where it's like female detectives in knitwear solving crimes?

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:01Elizabeth Day?

  I'm obsessed with it. And you don't have to read the subtitles.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  Yes, that's right.

• 26:05Elizabeth Day?

  Lucky you. So do you think Sweden left you understanding that you had a capacity for reinvention?

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. I think it was really, it really was what I hoped that it would be, that it was a chance to start from scratch and reinvent myself. I even, you know, I bought clothes especially for the trip and, you know, and I felt different in these new clothes and all that. It was really a remarkable experience.

• 26:34Elizabeth Day?

  Because you already knew by this point that you wanted to act.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:37Elizabeth Day?

  And I suppose the capacity for reinvention is a very useful thing for an actor. And so maybe it cemented that.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Maybe, yes, yeah. I mean, I I don't remember not wanting to be an actor.

• 26:49Elizabeth Day?

  How interesting.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Always, always wanted to be an actor.

• 26:51Elizabeth Day?

  And we're using the word actor very consciously here because you hate the word actress, don't you?

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Well, I feel like we don't need it, that S on the end of things like poetess or dr. S as a signal of female, you know, I just feel like we don't need that. I'm really bothered by when there's a thing, it's male. And if a woman is going to do it, you have to change the word. Even basketball, you know, when women play it, it's women's basketball. But playing basketball is men playing, you know, just all those things bug me.

• 27:23Elizabeth Day?

  It's othering.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:24Elizabeth Day?

  Othering. Yeah. I know it's probably really annoying, but will you say something in Swedish? Would you just say, I'm thrilled to be on this podcast talking about failure?

• 27:35Elizabeth Day?

  In Swedish, if you can, sorry.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Yes, oh, let me see.

• 27:39Elizabeth Day?

  Or anything. I wouldn't know. You could tell me anything in Swedish.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Yes, you wouldn't know what I'm saying. Jag är en fråga med dig, jag är en ruller.

• 27:48Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, I love it. It just sounds so good.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  I know. The way people said my name in Sweden was Jena.

• 27:56Elizabeth Day?

  Jena.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  So I liked being Jena.

• 27:59Elizabeth Day?

  And you couldn't just say Jena? That wouldn't sound the same.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  No, that's no, because they have that lilt when they speak.

• 28:05Elizabeth Day?

  Wow, so cool.

• 28:13Elizabeth Day?

  One of the things I hear a lot from listeners is how tiring it can be when your mind just doesn't settle. And I can only imagine this feels even heavier with intrusive thoughts. It's that quiet sense of being worn down by something you never asked for and never wanted, but just can't seem to switch off. If you struggle with this, I want to tell you about NoCD, because it's a resource that genuinely helps people. NoCD provides specialized treatment for OCD. And what I appreciate about their approach is how human it feels. You're matched with a licensed therapist trained in ERP therapy. That's Exposure and Response Prevention. And over time, you learn skills that help your OCD symptoms become manageable so you can live more of the life you want to live.

• 28:58Elizabeth Day?

  If you're struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NoCD can help. Book a free 15-minute call to get started at learn.nocd.com/fail.

• 29:16Elizabeth Day?

  Talking of acting, that brings us on to your second failure, which is not being a top model.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:23Elizabeth Day?

  So you, Gina Davis, had a very clear plan of how you were going to become an actor. What was it?

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Yes, so this came to me when I was in college studying acting. And all my friends wanted to be in play, you know, theatre. We were theatre majors. And I knew that I wanted to be in films instead. And nobody told me, you know, maybe you should move to LA once you graduate, you know. I just had no clue what I was supposed to do to get jobs in movies. So at the time, Christie Brinkley and Lauren Hutton also were getting roles in movies. And I thought, OK, so that means if I become a famous model, they'll just give me parts in movies. They'll just throw parts my way.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  So I'll just become a famous model because it's like so much easier to become a supermodel than an actor, I guess. So that was my goal. Yes, and I couldn't just be a model. I needed to be a very famous model in order for people to notice me and want to put me in movies.

• 30:28Elizabeth Day?

  So by this stage in your life, are you feeling friends with your physical appearance? Have you now realised that you are beautiful?

• 30:37Speaker 01

  Well, well, no, not really. But obviously, I still thought that I could potentially be a famous model because I don't know that I could trick people into thinking I was beautiful or something. I knew, I mean, I knew I was tall enough. But then even when I started modelling, and I did a lot of bathing suits and underwear suits and things like that, and I thought, it didn't make me think, wow, people are paying me a lot of money because they like how my body looks. I thought, OK, so I know how to trick people into thinking I have a good body because I know how to stand or hide my flaws or something. So it was weird.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  It was strange, you know, that I had this idea that I could be a very successful model. While still thinking that I wasn't attractive.

• 31:26Elizabeth Day?

  But you also seem like an extremely hard worker.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:29Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah, and so maybe it's a combination of I know I can work really hard at this.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:33Elizabeth Day?

  And I'm really good at tricking people because actually I'm a huge fraud, I'm a massive impostor.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:38Elizabeth Day?

  But no one else has realised yet, so I must be doing a good job at tricking.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 31:43Elizabeth Day?

  Has that sense of impostor syndrome ever left you?

• 31:47Speaker 01

  It impacted so much of my life, but I think it has left me, although I have to say, doing press for the book and people say lovely things about it, it's always like, oh gosh, you know, it's uncomfortable a little bit, like, really, you're, you know.

• 32:02Elizabeth Day?

  So do you feel uncomfortable with compliments? Or it's just that you don't believe them?

• 32:05Speaker 01

  No, I mean, it's just that I maybe think they're going too far or or something, you know. It's uncomfortable to admit that I am actually good at at things. Although I think I am, I think I I know I know that I am, but it's.

• 32:20Elizabeth Day?

  But you admit it in such a beautiful way that it doesn't in any way sound arrogant. I mean, you're so far the opposite end of the spectrum from arrogant that you could do with just five percent of like male entitlement.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 32:32Elizabeth Day?

  And you would still be utterly delightful and so don't worry about it.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, okay.

• 32:38Elizabeth Day?

  It sounds really good to me when you say, I think I am actually pretty good.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:42Elizabeth Day?

  At writing.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:44Elizabeth Day?

  Also, did you illustrate this book? Are they your illustrations?

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Yes, they are, yeah.

• 32:48Elizabeth Day?

  So you're basically a gifted cartoonist as well.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  I actually have a children's book that'll be coming out next year.

• 32:54Elizabeth Day?

  That you've illustrated?

• 32:55Speaker 01

  That I will have drawn the pictures to.

• 32:56Elizabeth Day?

  That's amazing, Gina. Okay, wait, so I've got distracted, so you were modelling?

• 33:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:01Elizabeth Day?

  And just tell us quickly the Ann Taylor story because it's so batshit, excuse my language, but it's also so brilliant.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Right, right, well, when I first moved to New York, the first day I went out and got a job as a salesgirl at Ann Taylor. But I needed, you know, something to support myself and I loved it. I thought Ann Taylor was like really the height of fashion or something. So I would very carefully dress, you know, makeup and hair and wear Ann Taylor clothes. And one day I noticed that the front window. There were mannequins sitting at a sort of a cafe table and they had plastic food in front of them as if they were having lunch. And there was an empty chair in the middle. And I was peeking in the window and I said to one of my girlfriends, dare me to go in the window. And she's like, yeah, yeah, go. So I went and sat in the chair of the window and I'm like, what am I gonna do now?

• 33:53Speaker 01

  And there were a couple of people who happened to be looking in the window and saw me get in there and they start watching me. And so I decided I was gonna freeze like a mannequin and pretend to be a mannequin. And so I did. And then they're just waiting there like, what's this? What's she gonna do? And then other people started coming up and saying, I could hear through the window, saying, what are you guys looking at? Because I guess I really looked like a mannequin. They said, well, just wait, just wait. And then they waited and more and more people said, what are you guys looking at? It's just a window with mannequins. And then finally, when I moved, everyone was like, ah, wow. And then I froze again. And anyway, the manager came over and saw what I was doing and she was like, Gina, get out of the window. And then she saw the big crowd and she said, well, actually stay in the window.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  And then they started hiring me to be a mannequin in the window.

• 34:42Elizabeth Day?

  And you took it to these extraordinary lengths where you had ties around your wrists to make it look like you're a plastic mannequin.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Like they were attached. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I got a wig that looked just like the wigs that the mannequins had on at Aunt Taylor. And I could hear everything people said, like I said. And I heard somebody say, it's not a mechanical mannequin. It has hair on its arms. And so, okay. And then I didn't have hair on my arms anymore. And then somebody said, it can't be a machine because it's not plugged in. And so then next day I had a little tiny wire, very subtly, drifting off. And then somebody said, oh, it's plugged in. It is a robot mannequin. And so, yeah.

• 35:24Elizabeth Day?

  Is there something that you love about being in a situation where you're in on the secret and you're in a position where you can observe people?

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Yes. It was fascinating. It was so fun. I could wrangle the crowd, you know, I could figure out when I should move, you know, I'd wait until it seems like people are gonna start drifting away. And then I'd do some move and whoop, then they're captivated again. It was great. It was really great. Sometimes they would try to throw me off, you know, they'd try to say things or do things that would distract me, but you know.

• 35:58Elizabeth Day?

  Do you think you're shy?

• 36:00Speaker 01

  I have been terribly shy and I could still become shy for sure, but not as much anymore. I mean, I was cripplingly shy in the beginning, like when I first started dating. It was sort of a nightmare because I didn't want to voice any opinions. Like they'd say, where should we have dinner or whatever? Oh, I don't, I don't know, wherever you want to. What do you want to eat? Oh, you know, whatever, I don't care. And it kind of drove guys crazy sometimes, like, can you ever just say what you want? And no.

• 36:34Elizabeth Day?

  Ultimately, you're trying to please them by doing that. I've done that in the past as well.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  Right, right. Like, I can't even pick what salad I want because he might not like the kind of lettuce. You know, it's like so insane to try to please someone in that way.

• 36:49Elizabeth Day?

  I am going to come back to this failure in just a second, but because we're talking about dating, you've been married four times. I'm a huge believer that a relationship is not a failure because it ends.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:59Elizabeth Day?

  And all failure is data acquisition. And I just wonder what those relationships have taught you, if you could sum it up.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Right, well.

• 37:09Elizabeth Day?

  Such a hard question.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Right, but I totally agree with you and I have excellent relationships with some of my exes because parts of it were very successful. And so you can retain those parts ultimately somehow, for whatever reason, it didn't work out in the long run. But, you know, I have very, very fond memories of a lot of my relationships.

• 37:29Elizabeth Day?

  So your failure as a top model led to you being an actor. Tell us how that happened.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Yes, so I did work here and there as an actor. When they were casting Tootsie, the casting director called model agencies and said, if you have any models that can also act, let me know. And they were like, we have one, she studied acting and everything. And so I got to audition for it and I was told to wear a bathing suit under my clothes because if I read well, they would want to see what my body looks like. The role entailed the character being in our underwear a couple of times with, you know, Dustin Hoffman pretending to be a woman and he comes in a room with a half naked. Woman and he has to not react, you know what I mean?

• 38:12Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah, cause I'm sure that happened a lot in auditions that around that time that you had to show. But actually with Tootsie, it was a slightly different element. It wasn't just that you were being sexually harassed.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  No, no, no, it was, it had an actual legitimate purpose. So anyway, so I go to the audition and it's just a casting assistant with a video recorder. She doesn't say, can I see you in a bathing suit? And so I think, well, obviously the first audition I ever have, I'm not gonna get cast in a movie with with Dustin Hoffman and Sidney Pollack, the director. So I forgot all about it. And I went for the first time to Paris to do the runway collections. I hadn't really ever done runway stuff before. And I'm very excited. And while I was gone, Sidney Pollack looked at the audition tapes and said, I really like this girl. Where's her bathing suit shot? And she said, oh, well, we forgot to ask her. Well, get her back.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  Oh, no, it turns out she can't. She's in France. Well, do they have any photos of her in a bathing suit? And thankfully, I had been in a Victoria's Secret catalog. So they just sent that over. And I'm not saying they went, well, let's get her, but it it it helped me get the part.

• 39:23Elizabeth Day?

  And Tootsie, which, I mean, it sounds like I'm making this up, is another one of my favorite films of all time. I rewatched it recently.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Yes, it really holds up, doesn't it?

• 39:32Elizabeth Day?

  And it's always such a relief when you go back to favorite films from like the eighties, nineties and they hold up.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 39:38Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, it's just, I think that what I love about it, obviously the performances are exceptional. I love Sidney Pollack, the director's cameo, like his part in it.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:48Elizabeth Day?

  But it's so warm hearted as a movie. And it sounds as though it was like that on set as well.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  It really was. It really was. It was incredible. I didn't know what it would be like to be on set and I was a little worried about it before I got there. I thought there might be some. Special movie acting that I hadn't learned as a theater major and that they would expect me to know how to movie act. So I was a little trepidatious in the beginning, but I got there and we shot my first scene and both Dustin and Sidney Pollack were incredibly respectful and welcoming, treated me like instantly like a peer. It was nothing like, well, she's just some model we got. It was like very, very supportive and welcoming. So the whole thing was like that.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  It was the most incredible introduction to a career in Hollywood that you could ever ask.

• 40:43Elizabeth Day?

  And Dustin Hoffman gave you very good advice for dealing with amorous co-stars, didn't he?

• 40:48Speaker 01

  He did. He gave me lots of good advice. All day long, he was thinking of things. He was like he wanted to prepare me for this career that he seemed sure that I would have. So one of the, yes, one of the pieces of advice was never sleep with your co-stars because, you know, it'll complicate things, it's just not good. So don't do it, but here's what you say, which was yay, okay, tell me what I say. And it was, I would love to, you're very attractive, but I don't want to ruin the sexual tension between us.

• 41:19Elizabeth Day?

  So good.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  And so I squirreled that away. All right, if I ever need that, I'm going to remember. And then I did need it only a few months later.

• 41:29Elizabeth Day?

  With Jack Nicholson?

• 41:30Speaker 01

  With Jack Nicholson, yes. My agent had taken me and a couple of other models who wanted to be actors to LA to meet casting directors, whatever. And he happened to know Jack Nicholson. So for this entire week, we had dinner with Jack Nicholson every night, just like the models, the agent and Jack Nicholson. And about midweek, I came home from appointments and there was a message, Gina, please call Jack Nicholson. I'm like, oh my God. I showed it to my roommate and stuff and I'm like, oh, Jack Nicholson wants me to call. So I call and say, hello, Jack, this is Gina, the model, you called me. And he says, yeah, hey Gina, when's it gonna happen? And I was like, why didn't I realize what this was gonna be about?

• 42:15Speaker 01

  You know, it's not gonna be, well, you start with me. In a movie, it's gonna be, let's get together. But I said, I thought, I know exactly what to say for once in my life. I said, well, Mr. Nicholson, Jack, I would love to. It's very tempting, but I have a feeling we're gonna work together in the future. And I would hate to have ruined the sexual tension between us.

• 42:39Elizabeth Day?

  Oh my, I mean, how elegant. And he said.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  And he said, oh man, where did you get that? Oh. He, he immediately assumed somebody had told me, you know, taught me to say that, but it worked.

• 42:52Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, I mean, thank you, Dustin Hoffman, for saving lovely, innocent Gina.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. Little did he know that I would need it so soon.

• 43:04Elizabeth Day?

  There's also a great bit, which isn't directly related, but about Warren Beatty.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:07Elizabeth Day?

  Tell us just quickly about that.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  So I was at a party that Warren Beatty was at, and in fact, I had just split with Jeff Goldblum, my second husband, and.

• 43:17Elizabeth Day?

  Who I never wanted you to split with, because the two of you just look like you fit together.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  We were, we were such a great couple, I have to say. We really were. I, I miss it. I miss it a lot. It had been public, so he knew about that. He said, hey, I was sorry to hear that you and Jeff split. You guys were such a great couple. In fact, I don't know if you remember, I was on a, on an elevator once with you two. I said, oh no, I don't remember. He says, yeah, I was looking at you guys. I thought they are such a great couple that I'm not even gonna fuck her.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  As if it's his prerogative.

• 43:49Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah, as if obviously he would have done otherwise.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Well, and that he can't, he can't, you know, he, he could just fuck anybody he wants.

• 43:56Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  And, but you know what? I'm gonna be so gracious that I'll leave this alone.

• 44:02Elizabeth Day?

  It's just, it's so funny that he then told you that as well, like.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:05Elizabeth Day?

  This is a compliment, though.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  It was a total compliment. I just loved you guys. I, I decided I wouldn't destroy it, you know, by.

• 44:13Elizabeth Day?

  Oh Gina, we're laughing about this, but I suppose there is a sort of underlying sense that it was a tough time for a woman navigating the movie industry, right through the eighties, nineties, early two thousands. How did you feel when the Me Too movement started in twenty seventeen?

• 44:31Speaker 01

  It was extraordinary. I mean, obviously, it came about for horrific reasons, but at least things became known, women started being believed. I remember the Cosby thing happened first, and I remember that it had gotten up to fifty women saying that he had assaulted them, and still people were saying, well, you know, we're not sure we can believe it. It's like, how many of us have, you know, does it take to be believed? And so, you know, it really became Me Too with the Harvey Weinstein of it all. But I was thrilled. I was absolutely thrilled that it came out and that we could talk about it and finally

• 45:11Speaker 01

  be believed and make change. When other women would come forward, and now it was okay to bring it up. And so, other people got busted, were discovered to be serial abusers, and it really changed things in Hollywood. I mean, not as much as we could wish. I'm sure things still go on in secret, and there's still women that might not want to come forward and say what happened to them. But it's very, very different. And part of it is that it is okay now if you feel strong enough to say what happened to you. Because I think when I was in the early years and my peers, I think we all felt like you can't complain

• 45:52Speaker 01

  about anything. They'll just get somebody else. You know, your job is to be no trouble, pleasant, nice to work with, and never, never, never complain about anything, whether it was salary or, you know, sexual assault, you couldn't talk about it. But Me Too changed that, that it suddenly was okay. Because then you saw women coming out and saying, Me Too, Me Too, this happened to me too. And then it became okay to talk about your salary also, which people had never felt comfortable, women had never felt comfortable talking about. But if you found out your co-star was making ten times what you were making, it suddenly became okay to say that in an interview and say, I deserve equal

• 46:36Speaker 01

  money. And I mean, this was just extraordinary.

• 46:39Elizabeth Day?

  It's such an interesting point you make about how you felt, as I did, that it was the price of admission, that you were lucky just even to be allowed onto the playing field, and anything that you had to put up with was just something you had to deal with. Because how lucky were we that we were allowed to have this job when our grandmothers wouldn't have had it? But Me Too, and I know I don't work in the same industry as you, but Me Too for me helped me re-categorize incidents in my past. And I wonder if it did that for you, because suddenly I was like, oh, that was harassment.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  Absolutely, it did, it definitely did. It helped me to re-categorize things for sure.

• 47:18Elizabeth Day?

  Were they specific incidents?

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Well, I had an audition for a movie quite early on. It was very early in my career. And the director acted incredibly inappropriately in this audition because he asked me to act out the scene, which was kind of a sexy scene, with him. And it involved sitting on a man's lap. And at first I thought he had to be kidding, you know, that, really? No, no, I mean, that isn't how auditions go. You read with somebody else. And he said, no, no, but sit here, do it with me. And I, I was like, I don't want to do this, but I did, you know, and hating every second of it. But after Me Too, I realized that helped me really re-categorize that as assault, really.

• 48:05Elizabeth Day?

  And not being your fault, that you went along with it?

• 48:07Speaker 01

  And not being my fault.

• 48:07Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 48:14Speaker 03

  Greetings, it's Mel Gedroich here, host of Where There's a Will, There's a Wake, the podcast that laughs in the face of death. Yes, that's right, celebrities plan every detail of their dream demise, from the funeral playlist to the buffet at The Wake. And our recent live funeral shows in an actual church delivered plenty of deliciously dark surprises. So if you've ever wondered what Mark Watson's final meal would be, or how Phil Wang would like to be remembered, you're in luck. Watch and listen to Mark Watson's funeral now, exclusively on Amazon Music. And don't miss Phil Wang's cracker of a funeral, coming on the 12th of November. See you on the other side.

• 48:49Speaker 04

  Two Girls, One Ghost. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America, where each week we dive into all things strange, spooky and supernatural, and share stories of paranormal encounters from our community of listeners. Satisfy that spooky itch and entertain your inner witch with Two Girls, One Ghost. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts and check us out on YouTube at Two Girls, One Ghost. But be warned, side effects might include a haunting or two. Listen at your own risk.

• 49:22Elizabeth Day?

  You got that part in Tootsie.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:23Elizabeth Day?

  Your movie career is stellar. And then we come to your third failure and I'm so glad that you have chosen this one, which is your ADD diagnosis.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 49:36Elizabeth Day?

  Because it came when you were 41, is that right?

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. So I had felt forever that there was something wrong with me that was a huge secret and had to be hidden. And I thought I had a sort of personality flaw or a character flaw because from when I was a kid, I noticed that I couldn't finish a lot of things or I couldn't start things. I got straight As up until junior high school because there was no homework per se that would have tripped me up. But once we started having assignments where you had to take several nights to write a paper or you had to study for several days for a test or something, I was like lost.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  And I didn't want anybody to know this about me, you know, that I wasn't able to do that. It was torture. It was just torture because I also felt like I must get all As, which I've been doing. And so it was really hard to get through high school. I mean, I managed to mostly still get As, but it was just so torturous. And, you know, and there were other things I just couldn't complete or I couldn't start. And I carried forward into my adult life and...

• 50:50Elizabeth Day?

  What about learning lines?

• 50:52Speaker 01

  I managed to pick a career and fortunately be able to get work in a career that absolutely puts a gun to your head because on that day, when they're going to shoot this thing and hundreds of people are there and they're spending, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars a day, you have to perform. You know, this is your one chance to get it right. And so I would learn the lines, but often the night before.

• 51:15Elizabeth Day?

  Right.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  But I would learn the lines and I would be absolutely ready when the time came. But if I'd had a more measured job where you're just kind of doing, you know, your work every day and I need to be steady, I would have had a terrible time.

• 51:30Elizabeth Day?

  And forgive my ignorance.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 51:32Elizabeth Day?

  Does ADD or ADHD have an impact on your personal relationships? Is there also an element of, I can't sustain this?

• 51:40Speaker 01

  It did, it really did. Not, I can't sustain this relationship, but as far as their image of me, their approval of me. Like eventually they would realise that she didn't do the thing I asked her to, or she didn't, you know, and look at our house, it's a mess and things like that. And I remember one relationship, the man said he wanted to break up because I never bought chairs for the dining room table. And I thought, what? But to him, he saw the way I was as a serious character flaw, that I just can't seem to finish things or focus on whatever it was he wanted me to focus on, so.

• 52:18Elizabeth Day?

  Wow, I'm sorry that happened.

• 52:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:20Elizabeth Day?

  So, so how did you get your diagnosis?

• 52:23Speaker 01

  I started with a therapist at forty-one and within, maybe by the second time I saw her, she said, has anybody ever told you that you have ADD? And I said, oh, no, no, no, I can't because I'm so not hyperactive. And back then, we still did call it ADD instead of ADHD. I said, I'm profoundly not hyperactive. She said, but you can have it without being hyperactive. I'm like, really? So she said, well, just go see this person and get tested. And I turned out that the results showed that I had a very serious case of ADD. And it was magic. It was so unbelievable to find that out, that there was a reason, you know, that for forty-one

• 53:08Speaker 01

  years, I'd been going through this sort of self-torture about not being able to do things that I wanted, you know, that I desperately wanted to do, but I just couldn't. I had an earlier therapist who, I would talk about this all the time, you know, I wanna, I wanna write a book, I wanna learn how to play the violin, I wanna, you know, all these things, but I can't seem to do it. And she would say, well, maybe you're just that kind of person who, you know, just doesn't do things. I mean, she said Winston Churchill did a lot of work in bed and maybe. You were kind of that.

• 53:41Elizabeth Day?

  I was also a functioning alcoholic.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 53:43Elizabeth Day?

  While the cans.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Right. Maybe you don't need to do all those things you keep saying you want to do. And I was like, I do. I really want to do them.

• 53:50Elizabeth Day?

  Wow.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:51Elizabeth Day?

  So it made sense of a lot of things for you.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 53:54Elizabeth Day?

  And then did it enable you to use it as a power rather than a weakness?

• 54:00Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, absolutely. Yes. It really changed everything. It was such a relief, to know that, wait a minute, I could stop blaming myself and abusing myself for having this giant flaw that I really don't want anybody to know about. And the other side of ADD is that you can also have attention surplus disorder, you know. My therapist described it as being like a lion and they lay around ninety percent of the day and then, oh, what's that? And then they're a hundred percent focused. So that's kind of what it's like.

• 54:36Elizabeth Day?

  So the archery.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:38Elizabeth Day?

  This stems from the same sort of time in your life.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Exactly the same time.

• 54:42Elizabeth Day?

  So do you think your diagnosis of ADD sort of fed into the fact that you were absolutely able to focus on becoming an Olympic level archer?

• 54:49Speaker 01

  Well, yes, yes. I started feeling completely differently about myself. And I'd had this idea that I wanted to take up a sport in real life and not just a movie version of a sport and had picked archery. Partly, I also started learning coping skills. I really wanted to become as good as I possibly could get at archery, which meant lots of practice. But I knew it was going to be hard to get to the practice field every day. So sometimes I would have him meet me. I would make an appointment at ten o'clock. Please meet me there. And I would have to not let him keep waiting. But once I started and he got me started, he could leave and I'd spend five hours there, you know. Yeah.

• 55:30Elizabeth Day?

  And one of the things that you wrote you loved about archery.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:33Elizabeth Day?

  Is that there's nothing subjective about it.

• 55:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:36Elizabeth Day?

  Tell us about that.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Yes. It was amazing to realize what it was about it that really meant so much to me, which was you can measure it. It's points. It doesn't matter what you wear. It doesn't matter people's opinion. It's nothing like, you know, ice skating or something where there's judges. You hit the target or you don't, and you add up the points and you know exactly how you did. And it was so different from my day job, which is utterly subjective. So I love that about it.

• 56:06Elizabeth Day?

  I've just got a few more questions for you, I promise, and then I'll let you go. If anyone is listening to this and they have just had a diagnosis of ADHD or ADD and they're feeling really low about it, what would you say to them?

• 56:19Speaker 01

  You know, it's actually kind of fabulous to have ADHD. People tend to be incredibly creative and if you can develop coping skills, there's all kind of articles about how to develop coping skills to counteract the effect of not being able to start things or finish things. It's actually can be a real advantage. You see the world through very colourful eyes and so it can be great.

• 56:43Elizabeth Day?

  It's kind of fabulous. I love that.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:46Elizabeth Day?

  So I wanted to ask you before we daughter close about age, but specifically the fact that the Gina Davis story, as told in multiple interviews, is you had this extraordinary career and then you hit forty and the roles seemed to dry up. And you were interested in why that was happening and you launched the Gina Davis Institute as a result of that. And then you started getting roles again and now you sit before us, the fabulous woman that you are. But my reading of it is that I feel you really discovered yourself in your forties. You had this diagnosis, you became an Olympic level archer.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 57:22Elizabeth Day?

  You were doing all of that. And actually, it sounds such an empowering decade in many ways. And one of the things I know that happened in your forties is that you became a mother.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 57:32Elizabeth Day?

  My personal story is that I'm not a mother yet and I'm in my forties.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 57:37Elizabeth Day?

  And it's been a long old journey, but I'm determined to get there.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:40Elizabeth Day?

  And I suppose what I'm asking from you is what it's like being a parent in your forties and whether that came with lots of benefits because you were slightly older.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  Yes, it did. And in fact, I'd always knew I wanted kids at some point. I waited very, very long. But I knew that the older I was, the better it might be because I felt like I had low self-esteem. And I didn't want my kids to have low self-esteem. So I felt like the older I got, the more confident I would get, more evolved I would get. And then I would be better positioned to be a great role model to them. So that was my thinking.

• 58:15Elizabeth Day?

  That's beautiful.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  It's going to be a, it's going to be advantage. I want to say the impression of me that you were talking about, I did not start the institute because I had a lack of jobs at all. It was specifically about the lack of female characters in kids' entertainment. When I started showing preschool shows that I thought were educational or whatever to my daughter, I immediately noticed that there were far more male characters than female characters in the 21st century. And what are we doing? You know, we're showing kids that girls are profoundly less important than boys. And we're showing boys that boys are more important. So, so I'm like, we have to change this immediately.

• 58:59Elizabeth Day?

  And you have one daughter and two twin sons?

• 59:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 59:02Elizabeth Day?

  So if they were sitting here today, how do you think they would describe you as a mother?

• 59:07Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know. I know they love me.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  They, yeah, they're, we have a great relationship. But I made a point of being their media literacy coach. So I would watch everything with them and I was able to say, why do you think there's no girls in that scene? Do you think girls could do what those boys are doing? And, and so they're very savvy now as, now they're adults.

• 59:33Elizabeth Day?

  Well, I'm sure they're incredibly grateful to you, but we're incredibly grateful to you for shaping the culture as an actor, as a campaigner, as the phenomenal woman that you are. I cannot thank you enough for giving me your time and your warmth today. Gina Davis, thank you so much for coming on How to Fail.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  Thank you. It was so much fun. Thank you.