Q 6

PLAYBOY: You're a confessed catalog freak. Which are your favorites?

Geena Davis: I like the ones with gadgets, like Hammacher Schlemmer. Once I got some pasta forks--and this is not a gag item, which is the sick thing--that you stick into the pasta and you turn this little crank on the top and it spins the fork part around. And it says in the catalog, "Helpful for people who are not that coordinated." Well, who can't spin a fork around? I don't keep catalogs. I get them, I look, right away, I chuck 'em. Now that I've become an expert, I know immediately which ones I don't want. I literally get about twenty-five catalogs per day--a giant stack. If there's something I like, I hit the speakerphone and order with the eight-hundred number, because I know my credit card by heart. Then I trash them. It's very demoralizing to Jeff, because he feels that he gets no mail. It seems like every day, the U.P.S. guy, Nick, comes around ten and there's something that I ordered several weeks before and by then, I've no idea what it is. So it's like presents every day; it's really fun.

Q 7

PLAYBOY: What's your secret vice?

Geena Davis: I like scaring people. I like scaring Jeff. I can remember scaring people a lot growing up. I have an elbow that bends the wrong way, and I'd do things like stand in an elevator and the doors would close and I'd pretend that my arm had got caught in it and then I'd scream, "Ow, ow, put it back!" I enjoy shocking people. They, possibly, expect me to be sort of nice or ladylike. So I like to try to turn that around. My favorite thing that happened, ever, was when Jeff and I were in an elevator and he had the hiccups. You know how you always go "Boo" at somebody who has the hiccups and that never works? But I took him completely by surprise. I was leaning very casually against the wall, and then I threw myself in his face, screaming "Boo," and he almost had a heart attack and it cured his hiccups. And that's the truth.

Q 8

PLAYBOY: You and Jeff met on the film Transylvania 6-5000. How did you know it was love and not just another on-the-set fling?

Geena Davis: I'd never fallen in love with anybody on the set before, so I didn't know. There was something about Jeff--beyond its happening on a set. It was the one time in my life that I looked at somebody and instantly thought, Well, fine, this is The Guy. It was kind of remarkable. And he claims that the same thing happened for him. He says that he took one look at me and was instantly mad--thinking, Here's somebody I could really like and I know she's not going to like me and I'm furious. So he was very cool toward me in the beginning, which, of course, I found very attractive. I was having fits of terrific shyness. Crippling shyness. I couldn't even carry on a conversation with him and it was very embarrassing, because I was thinking, God, I really like this guy, but I was just mumbling into my chest all the time, and he was probably thinking, See, she doesn't like me. Finally, when I was just stammering and trying to answer something he'd asked me, I said, "Please bear with me, because I'm not always like this. You'll see." Now he says when I said that, he didn't realize how different I'd be. "Remember those days you were so completely different, honey?"

Q 9

PLAYBOY: As a two-actor family, how do you handle the long separations when one or both of you are on location?

Geena Davis: If I'm free, I sometimes go where Jeff is and try to spend as much time with him as I can. But it also makes me crazy. I have fits that last weeks. All day long, I'll wear my bathrobe and sit around the hotel room. I'm not one of those people who want to uncover a city, someone who buys the guidebooks and hits all the art galleries. Nope. I order room service and watch foreign game shows and get very depressed.

Q 10

PLAYBOY: Have you ever bought the hotel bathrobe?

Geena Davis: Yeah. I have one from the Savoy and one from the Ritz Carlton. I buy them only if they have long sleeves; I hate it when they're really short. Or high waisted. When the belt loops are too high, it's very annoying.

Q 11

PLAYBOY: What movie do you think best describes your life with Jeff?

Geena Davis: Isn't it obvious? Pee-wee's Big Adventure!

Q 12

PLAYBOY: You've said that you sometimes alter yourself to make others like you. Do people make you nervous?

Geena Davis: People who appear terrifically self-confident make me feel insecure. If I meet somebody who's terrifically self-possessed, I start feeling embarrassed, like, Oh, no, they're not going to think that I'm self-possessed like they are. I'm going to seem like a jerk. So in case you run into me at the store and want to intimidate me, just start acting very self-possessed [laughs].