Geena Whiz!

SPOTLIGHT

geena Davis—she of the fromhere-to-eter-

nitylegs—has never had difficulty filling a frame. Her lanky, six-foot body seems made for awed, toe-to-head pan shots, concluding in close-ups of a beautifulgoofy face which often appears slightly surprised to find itself at such an empyreal height. With her apple cheeks, affable overbite, and cliche-thwarting deadpan delivery, the Massachusetts-born actress suggests a hometown girl grown giddily and unexpectedly into statuesque glamour. For years, Hollywood tended to cast her as a sweetheart bizarro, a kook you could take home to Mother, even if Mom lived on Mars. She was the girlfriend of a mutating scientist and of a furry blue alien (in The Fly and Earth Girls Are Easy), a cozy vampire (Transylvania 6-5000), and a domestic ghost (Beetlejuice).

When she landed on earth, as the funky dog trainer in 1988's The Accidental Tourist, she picked up an Oscar and reminded us that true eccentricity is never just about surface. But nothing could have prepared us for her dazzling, carefully calibrated work in the current Thelma & Louise, Ridley Scotf s distaff buddy movie co-starring Susan Sarandon, in which Davis plays a loutish carpet salesman's baby-doll wife, who, after an attempted rape, is transformed into a feminist pirate. Now divorced from actor (and former frequent co-star) Jeff Goldblum and with her own recently established production company at Twentieth Century Fox, Davis is standing comparably, and independently, tall in real life.

BEN BRANTLEY