Geena Davis this week detailed the time she politely turned down Jack Nicholson’s sexual advances when she was a young model and actress by taking advice given to her by Dustin Hoffman.
Davis, 66, starred with Hoffman, 85, in 1982’s “Tootsie” – her first movie role – during which he advised her not to sleep with her co-stars. He told her what to say if she was ever propositioned by a leading man.
“‘Say, well, you’re very attractive. I would love to, but it would ruin the sexual tension between us,’” Davis told the New Yorker magazine of Hoffman’s advise in an interview published on Thursday.
Geena Davis said Dustin Hoffman gave her advice for turning down male co-stars wanting to sleep with her when she was just starting out in the industry.
(Anthony Harvey/FilmMagic/Santiago Felipe/Getty Images)
“And I saved that advice away,” she continued. “After ‘Tootsie,’ my modeling agent took me and a couple of other actor-slash-models to Hollywood to meet casting directors.” Davis had been living in New York while working as a model.
GEENA DAVIS SAYS SHE’S ‘GRATEFUL’ SHE HAD HE KIDS IN HER 40S: ‘I WANTED TO WAIT’
She said her agent knew Nicholson, 85, and the “Shining” actor decided to have dinner with the models every night while they were there.
“Then one day there was a note under the door that said, ‘Please call Jack Nicholson at this number.’ I was, like, ‘I can’t believe it!'”
Actor Jack Nicholson poses for a photo shoot in 1993 in his hotel room, in Los Angeles, California.
(Michael Tighe/Donaldson Collection/Getty Images)
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The actress, who was in her 20s at the time, said she called the “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” actor back, who is 19 years her senior. “So I said, ‘Hello, Mr. Nicholson. This is Geena the model. You called me?’ He said, ‘Hey, Geena. When is it gonna happen?’”
She said the proposition took her by surprise. “I was, like, Oh, no — why didn’t I realize this is what it was going to be about? But it immediately came into my head what to say: ‘Uh, Jack, I would love to. You’re very attractive. But I have a feeling we’re going to work together at some point in the future, and I would hate to have ruined the sexual tension between us.’”
Geena Davis attends the 2020 Vanity Fair Oscar Party at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on February 09, 2020 in Beverly Hills, California.
(Toni Anne Barson/WireImage)
She said he responded, “‘Oh, man, where’d you get that?’ So it worked.”
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The anecdote was one of many she has detailed in her forthcoming memoir “Dying of Politeness.”
