Geena Davis is spilling all the tea on one of the most defining films of her prolific career -- Thelma & Louise .
Sitting down for her ETrETrospective from the Bentonville Film Festival, the 68-year-old actress -- a co-founder and honoree of the festival, which marked its tenth anniversary this year --dished on falling in love with the Louise ( Susan Sarandon ) to her Thelma while filming the 1991 flick and why she had the deciding vote on who should get to play the role of J.D. -- a job that ultimately helped to launch Brad Pitt 's career.
Davis has previously shared that Pitt, throughout the casting process, was in stiff competition as she also read with Mark Ruffalo , George Clooney and Melrose Place star Grant Show before inadvertently picking the Moneyball actor, 60, for the part.
"Listen, I don't want to take any credit whatsoever, Brad earned the part -- obviously," Davis tells ET. "There were threeother guys that I read with. They wanted to see these four final candidates and who might I have chemistry with. So one by one, they came in -- really handsome, really talented -- and then the last one was Brad Pitt."
According to Davis, Pitt was so charming while reading for the part of bad boy J.D. -- a convicted felon who takes off with all of Thelma and Louise's money and sends them into a crime spree -- that she could barely focus on her own lines.
"I was so distracted by how charismatic he is, he just oozes charisma. But I would say my line and he'd say his line," she said as she feigned getting distractedby Pitt's looks and acting chops only to pick her line back up and lose herself again.
"[I was] just like so dazzled ... and then he got the part," she shares. In 2022, she told talk show host Graham Norton that when producers asked for her opinion, she told them to go with the "blonde one" and that the rest was history. Hilariously, Davis tells ET she apologized to Pitt for "screwing up" his audition and that he was more than forgiving, telling her, "'It's all good.'"
Pitt certainly wasn't the only actor on set that Davis was swooning over, however. Back in 1991, she sat down with ET and explained the instant connection she had with Sarandon, 77, and how she knew, even then, that they would be friends for life.
"I really did think about this movie and went, 'Well, what if I really don't like Susan, how can I make that work?' The second I laid eyes on her, she walked in the room and I like fell in love with her, it was so funny," she said at the time. "That has rarely happened to me before."
Reacting to the archival clip, Davis awwed and called Sarandon one of her best friends and closest allies, saying they were meant to find each other on the set of that little movie that took off and became a classic.
"We are very close, she has always been and always will be my ride or die," Davis says of Sarandon, who the A League of Their Own star said she will always remember meeting.
"It's one of the most memorable moments of my life, is the day I met Susan," Davis says. "It was Ridley [Scott], Susan and I were getting together, just us, and we were going to go through the script page by page and [see] if any of us had any thoughts or ideas or any little changes maybe that we might want to make."
Sarandon -- who Davis says was bold and empowered in a "revolutionary" way to her -- came to the script ready to make edits, which opened up Davis' eyes to how to speak up for herself and approach issues with the job.
"I swear, we crack open the script and on page one, Susan says, 'My first line here, I think we should just cut it.' And I was like, 'Can people do that? Is it OK to say that?'" Davis jokes. "Everybody loved her. It wasn't like, 'Oh, we like Geena better because she's a complete wimp.' There was nothing confrontational about her, she just said what she thought."
The film stars Davis and Sarandon as the titular characters who are lifelong best friends and in desperate need of an escape from their humdrum Arkansas lives and unfulfilling relationships. But a weekend getaway ends with the two fleeing for Mexico in a turquoise Thunderbird after killing a man, the authorities in pursuit on a full-throttle crime spree.
Thelma & Louise -- helmed by Alien and Blade Runner directorRidley Scott-- became a runaway hit for the actresses and creative minds, including writerCallie Khouri, who went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1992. Davis and Sarandon were also nominated for Oscars in the Best Leading Actress category while Scott, 86, received a nod for Best Director.
For Davis, who already won an Academy Award for Best Actress in The Accidental Tourist , Thelma & Louise will forever be a film that she categorizes as one of the most important in her career, especially looking back some 33 years later.
"The entire experience was a lesson for me on how to operate in the world in a completely different way than I had," Davis shared.
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