Actress Geena Davis has offered up a good bit of advice her former costar Dustin Hoffman once gifted her.
The two acted together in hit film “Tootsie” when the veteran actor Hoffman relayed to newcomer Davis the piece that she utilized to ward off unwanted sexual advances from men in Hollywood. She even told The New Yorker about one such time with Jack Nicholson.
According to Davis, Hoffman told her, “Say, ‘Well, you’re very attractive. I would love to, but it would ruin the sexual tension between us.”
The story also appears in Davis’s recently released memoir, “Dying of Politeness.”
After “Tootsie”’s 1982 release Davis claimed her modeling agent took her and a few others in similar positions, as actors/models, to meet casting directors in Hollywood. Nicholson was at each one, she said.
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“Every single night Jack Nicholson had dinner with us,” she said. “Then one day, there was a note under the the door that said, ‘Please call Jack Nicholson at this number.’ I was like, I can’t believe it!”
Davis called Nicholson and it quickly became apparent his interest wasn’t in her acting abilities.
“I said, ‘Hello, Mr. Nicholson. This is Geena the model. You called me?’ He said, ‘Hey, Geena. When is it gonna happen?’ I was like, Oh, no – why didn’t I realize this is what it was going to be about?”
She then remembered Hoffman's words of wisdom!
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“It immediately came into my head what to say: ‘Uh Jack, I would love to. You’ve 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,” she said.
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