Multifaceted actress/athlete/advocate Geena Davis will keynote at the PMA Foundation Women's Fresh Perspectives Conference in Loews Coronado Bay in San Diego at the April 28 closing session with an address entitled “Geena Takes Aim: Empowering Women.”

Recently Davis took time to answer questions posed by The Produce News in advance of her Women's Fresh Perspectives address, looking specifically at how she's achieved personal goals and also the importance she places on both a healthy lifestyle and self-confidence.Geena Davis

When asked by The Produce News if she could rank the effects of strong family ties, personal determination, confidence in her own decisions and a healthy lifestyle, Davis responded with characteristic humor: “Impossible! Ha.”

She continued, “Perhaps, though, I can rank them in this way: Strong family ties and a healthy lifestyle are very important to everyone, including me. But the qualities that have most impacted my life are those of personal determination and confidence in my decisions. Some of the most important milestones in my life — like winning an Academy Award, getting cast in 'Thelma and Louise' and qualifying for the Olympic trials in archery at age 43 — are a direct result of determination and confidence.”

Not content to rest on her laurels in any one arena, Davis gives back as her own lifescape enlarges. For instance, she has quietly committed to such endeavors as the USAID and Ad Council's FWD campaign in Africa, and the Institute on Gender in Media is making inroads for gender fairness. Davis told The Produce News that in some instances her acting roles have spurred an interest in causes.

“My interest in much of what I advocate for springs from certain roles that I have played,” she said. “For example, after playing a baseball phenomenon in 'A League of Their Own,' I got in touch with the women's sports foundation because I wanted to help girls find improved self-esteem like I did through learning a sport. I became a trustee of WSF for 10 years. And after playing the President on television in the series 'Commander in Chief,' I became very involved in encouraging women to run for office through being a board member of The White House Project.”

Davis, mother of three, including fraternal twins, pays close attention to the traction being gained by the Institute on Gender in Media, and she said, “We know we are influencing in the entertainment industry. We did a survey of everyone who has heard our research presentation in Hollywood and found that 68 percent said what they learned had impacted two of their projects, and 41 percent said it had impacted four or more of their projects.”

The determination and confidence Davis exhibits today is part and parcel of a film career that has spanned more than three decades with prominent roles in more than two dozen movies and television roles. She is the recipient of both the Academy Award and the Golden Globe, and her best-known roles include “The Fly,” “Beetlejuice,” the iconic “Thelma & Louise,” “A League of Their Own,” “The Long Kiss Goodnight,” “Stuart Little” and “The Accidental Tourist.” It was 1998's “The Accidental Tourist” that brought Davis her Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress along with her co-star Susan Sarandon for "Thelma and Louise."

In 2005, she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Series Drama for her role in "Commander in Chief," and in 2014, she returned to television portraying Dr. Nicole Herman in "Grey's Anatomy."

In July 1999, the Mensa-member-and-athlete Davis is was one of 300 women who vied for a semifinals berth in the U.S. Olympic archery team to participate in the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics. She placed 24th of 300, and while she did not qualify for the team, she did participate as a wild-card entry in the Sydney International Golden Arrow competition. As an aside, Davis took up archery in 1997, only two years before the tryouts... “the direct result of determination and confidence,” as she stated.