Geena Davis‘s memoir, “Dying Of Politeness,” dropped earlier this month, and in it, the actress has plenty of stories from her rise to fame and subsequent career. But one of the best stories is one she told The New Yorker in a recent profile, about the career advice her “Tootsie” co-star Dustin Hoffman told her to ward off the sexual advances of other actors.
Vanity Fair (via The New Yorker) details Davis’ story about how Hoffman helped her early in her career. In between takes on “Tootsie,” Hoffman told her to “read a lot of books,” but also a great line to beat back flirtatious actors. Here’s the line Hoffman gave Davis: “Well, you’re very attractive. I would love to, but it would ruin the sexual tension between us.” And guess who Davis used it on first? None other than Jack Nicholson.
Davis recounted the incident to The New Yorker. “After “Tootsie”, my modeling agent took me and a couple of other actor-slash-models to Hollywood to meet casting directors,” said Davis. “He happened to know Jack Nicholson, and every single night Jack Nicholson had dinner with us. 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! So I said, ‘Hello, Mr. Nicholson. This is Geena the model. You called me?’ He said, ‘Hey, Geena. When is it gonna happen?’”
That’s when Davis dropped Hoffman’s line on the unsuspecting Nicholson. “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.’ He was like, ‘Oh, man, where’d you get that?’ So it worked.”
The irony of the story is that Hoffman has since been accused of sexual misconduct, which he has denied. And when those allegations went public in 2018, it was none of other than Davis’ “Quick Change” co-star Bill Murray who came to Hoffman’s defense. “Dustin Hoffman is a great man,” Murray said during an appearance at New York City’s 92nd Street Y in 2018. “He’s crazy, a borscht belt flirt, has been his whole life. [But] he’s a really sweet man.”
Murray is currently in hot water for an alleged incident on the set of “Being Mortal” earlier this year, but Davis has a Murray story of her own from the “Quick Change” set. The actress claims Murray tested if she would be “compliant” by requesting she lied on a bed and try a massage device called “The Thumper.” In her memoir, Davis wrote, “I said no multiple times, but he wouldn’t relent.” Murray also allegedly screamed at Davis during the filming of “Quick Change.”
It’s nice to hear that Davis effectively executed Hoffman’s line against Nicholson. However, it also makes one wonder what possible future allegations could come out against him, Murray, and other actors of their generation in the memoirs of other actresses.