Genna Davis is revealing details about the time she shot down Jack Nicholson’s sexual advances towards her by invoking advice she received by her co-star Dustin Hoffman.
Davis, 66, in an interview on Thursday that she learned quite a bit from Hoffman, 85, after landing opposite the veteran movie star in the pair’s 1982 rom-com.
Hoffman told Davis, who was still a green-actress, to read a lot of books and to ward off overly eager men in the business.
Davis said, “I always saved that piece of advice from him in the back of my mind.”
Davis was a Victoria’s Secret lingerie model living in New York and trying to break into acting when she landed the role of April Page in “Tootsie.”
Shortly after the movie came out, she said her modeling agent took her and a couple of other actor-slash-models to Hollywood to meet casting directors.
Davis said, “My agent happened to know Nicholson’s, 85, and we all had dinner together with my peers every single night.”
“One day, there was a not under my door that said, ‘Please call Jack Nicholson at this number’. I couldn’t believe it and excitedly called the number,” Davis recalled.
“So I said, ‘Hello, Mr. Nicholson. This is Geena, the model. You called me?’ He said, ‘Hey, Geena. When is it gonna happen?’” she claimed. “I was kind of surprised at that point. 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?’” the actress continued to recall. “So it worked.”
The anecdote, which Davis first spoke about in 2014, is among many featured in her newly released book, “Dying of Politeness: A Memoir.”
