Tall order for Davis

Geena Davis tells ROBERT WARD that Stuart Little is the cutest mouse she has never met.


Geena Davis often dwarfs castmates, but her new movie, Stuart Little, is a total mismatch.

Her co-star, the title character, is only 75mm tall. He's also a mouse who talks in Michael J. Fox's chipper tones and is a very snappy dresser. Stuart Little has proved to be the mouse that roared, taking $US138 million at the American box office.

The film is based on the 1945 children's book by American writer E. B. White about a furry addition to the Little family. Hugh Laurie and Davis play Mr and Mrs Little and Jonathan Lipnicki, the cute tyke from Jerry Maguire, is their son George, who's not impressed that his new brother is a rodent.

Neither is family cat Snowbell, who delivers tart one-liners in the voice of Nathan Lane: "I can't believe this; I'm arguing with lunch."

Snowbell's jealousy sets off the plot twists that result in Stuart leaving the Littles' cosy Fifth Ave, New York, home and being hunted by alley cats in Central Park.

Stuart Little is the first film Davis has made in two years, after the successive big-budget flops Cutthroat Island and The Long Kiss Goodnight, both directed by her husband Renny Harlin, failed to turn her into an action heroine.

She divorced Harlin three years ago, took up archery and became good enough at it to compete at semifinals last August to choose the three women archers who will represent the United States at the Sydney Olympics. Davis missed out but has a national ranking of 28th, not bad after only three years' experience in the sport.

So now Davis is ready for anything, even sharing screen time with a mouse.

Stuart Little was a tough shoot because, she says, "The mouse didn't show up for the movie. He was in his trailer."

Stuart was created on computer after Davis and her castmates had done their work. A laser pointer was used to mark the spot where Stuart would be in the final shot.

"The big challenge of the film," says Davis, "was sort of doing both sides, really having faith that whatever we were putting into it was gonna be matched by something that just didn't even exist.

"We had to commit passionately to believing that we're the parents of this mouse and we care about him deeply and we love him, and yet he's just not there. We're talking to the table top and just really caring about that dot on the table and it was pretty hilarious sometimes, when we realised, 'God, we're crying over a spot on the table.'

"It was challenging. But you just had to take a leap of faith that they were gonna have the technology to be able to make him be as emotional as we were."

The special-effects experts were up to the task. They created an engagingly photo-realistic mouse with natural-looking fur, emotion and character as well as hands rather than paws and the ability to talk and walk on two legs, not to mention a designer wardrobe.

Director Rob Minkoff, who co-directed The Lion King, invited Davis to see her furry co-star for the first time a couple of months after shooting.

"The first thing I saw was the kiss, which took three hours to shoot, just leaning in and kissing him and leaning out. Oh, my back, because I had to hit exactly this one little particular spot with my lips where Stuart was going to be eventually and it was crazy all these technicians measuring where my lips are. It was very funny."

The film also had a message for her: "The theme I think that comes across strongly is that it doesn't matter what you look like on the outside, it's who you are inside. Stuart is a metaphor for everybody who feels like a misfit. He's a very extreme example of somebody who doesn't, in the outward sense, look like he belongs and yet he has such a big heart and is such a valuable person that he is a member of our family. I think it's just a lovely message but told in a very cute and funny way."

Davis felt like a misfit when she was growing up in small-town Massachusetts, mostly because she was so tall. But when she lived in Sweden for a year as a foreign exchange student, she felt right at home: "Everybody's tall and I was like, 'Well, I'm staying here. This is great.'"

She studied piano and flute for years as a kid. Acting was always Davis' ambition and, after graduating from drama studies at Boston University in 1979, she went to New York to get a modelling career, hoping that would launch her into acting.

It took two years of working as a model, but the break into acting finally happened. Director Sydney Pollack saw her in a Victoria's Secret lingerie and clothing catalogue and gave Davis her first screen role, in Tootsie, in 1982.

Seven years later, after The Fly (she married co-star Jeff Goldblum) and Beetlejuice, she won the Oscar as best supporting actress for The Accidental Tourist. An Oscar nomination as best actress followed in 1991 for Thelma and Louise which, with A League of Their Own the following year, marked the highpoint of her career.

Comedy, science-fiction, horror, sports, action Davis has done it all. She's played a dead housewife, an amnesiac assassin, the girlfriend of a fly and now the mother of a rodent.

"I've done really unique kinds of stuff, so I'm grateful."

She hasn't done a Merchant-Ivory period piece, so that appeals, and, "It would be nice to do a romantic comedy about now. Anything different."

Actually she is doing comedy soon but on the small screen having been offered her a 22-episode commitment to the new series Lost and Found for $US200,000 ($NZ408,000) an episode In the series Davis will play a 30-something businesswoman who finds her life at a turning point after she falls for a handsome widower with two kids.

As for arrows of a non-cupid nature, the archery began when she watched it on TV during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and thought it looked cool. She found a coach, got good at it and started competing.

While she was shooting Stuart Little she had a target next to the soundstage so she could practise during breaks, and she continues to compete because she wants to see how good she can become.

So much of the sport is mental and that's what fascinates Davis.

"Every thought you have affects where the arrow goes and you can't think, 'I hope this hits the bull's-eye' or 'I hope it doesn't miss.' It's endlessly challenging to try to conquer yourself. It's like a contest with yourself."

"It's been really transformative in my life to find myself feeling capable in another completely different area where it's just you. In archery you take total responsibility.

"There's no marketing campaign or release date or anything like that. It's all on your shoulders. People say, in studies, that athletics contributes to your sense of worth and self-esteem, but I think it's really true. It really helps a lot."



Who: Geena Davis

What: Stuart Little

When and where:Now showing, cinemas nationwide