Sigourney Weaver

Sigourney Weaver
Sigourney Weaver at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival
Born	Susan Alexandra Weaver October 8, 1949 (1949-10-08) (age 61) Manhattan, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1976–present
Spouse	Jim Simpson (1984–present)

Sigourney Weaver (born Susan Alexandra Weaver; October 8, 1949) is an American actress best known for her role as Ellen Ripley in the Alien film series, a role for which she has received worldwide recognition. She is also known for her roles in the Ghostbusters films, Gorillas in the Mist, The Ice Storm, Working Girl, Holes, and Avatar.

Weaver is also a three-time Academy Award nominee for her performances in Aliens (1986), Gorillas in the Mist (1988), and Working Girl (1988) winning Golden Globe Awards in the latter two films.^[1] She has been called 'The Sci-Fi Queen' by many on account of her many science fiction and fantasy films.

Early life

Weaver was born in Manhattan, New York City, the daughter of Elizabeth Inglis (née Desiree Mary Lucy Hawkins; 1913–2007), an English actress, and the NBC television executive Sylvester "Pat" Laflin Weaver (1908–2002), an American of Scottish, Scots-Irish, and early New England ancestry.^[2][3][4][5] Her uncle, Doodles Weaver, was a comedian and actor. She began using the name "Sigourney Weaver" in 1963 after a minor character (Sigourney Howard) in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby.^[6][7]

Weaver with her father Pat Weaver in 1989

Weaver attended the Ethel Walker School, a prep school in Simsbury, Connecticut, where she was made fun of all the time for being a nerd and for her height. She also attended The Chapin School. Sigourney was reportedly 5′ 10½″ (179 cm) tall by the age of 14, but she only grew another inch during her teens to her adult height of 5′ 11½″ (182 cm). Weaver graduated from Stanford University, with a bachelor of arts degree in English in 1972, but she had already begun her involvement in acting, by living in Stanford's co-ed Beta Chi Community for the Performing Arts.^[8] Weaver earned her Master of Fine Arts degree at the Yale University School of Drama in 1974,^[9] where one of her appearances was in the chorus in a production of Stephen Sondheim's musical version of The Frogs, and another was as one of a mob of Roman soldiers alongside Meryl Streep in another production.^[10] Weaver later acted in original plays by her friend and classmate Christopher Durang. She later appeared in an "Off Broadway" production of Durang's comedy Beyond Therapy in 1981, which was directed by the up-and-coming director Jerry Zaks.

Film career

Weaver at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival

Although Weaver has played a number of critically acclaimed roles in movies such as Gorillas in the Mist, The Ice Storm, Dave, and The Year of Living Dangerously, she is best known for her appearances as Warrant Officer/Lieutenant Ellen Ripley in the blockbuster Alien movie franchise. She first appeared as Ripley in Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien. She reprised the role in three sequels, Aliens, Alien 3, and Alien Resurrection. She was nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award for portraying Ripley in Aliens, one of the very few actresses so honored for a role in a science fiction movie. She also starred in two films in 1988, receiving Academy Award nominations for her roles as Katherine Parker in Working Girl and as naturalist Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist. She never won one of the two, although she received Golden Globes for both roles.

Weaver also appeared in Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II as Dana Barrett. She played the role of agoraphobic criminal psychologist Helen Hudson in the 1995 movie Copycat. In addition to her trademark role as Ripley, Weaver has recently concentrated on smaller roles such as 1999's A Map of the World and 2006's Snow Cake. She has also appeared in comedic roles, such as Jeffrey (1994), Galaxy Quest (1999), and Heartbreakers (2001).

In 1997, Weaver won the BAFTA Award for her supporting role in Ang Lee's The Ice Storm. In 2003, she was voted 20th in Channel 4's countdown of the 100 greatest movie stars of all time. She was one of only two women in the top 20 (the other was Audrey Hepburn). That year, she also played The Warden in the movie Holes. In 2006, Weaver returned to Rwanda for the BBC special Gorillas Revisited.

In 2009, Weaver starred as Mary Griffith in her first made-for-TV movie, Prayers for Bobby, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award, Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild Award. She also guest starred in the TV show Eli Stone in the fall of 2008.^[11] Weaver also played the role of a news reporter in the 2008 American film Vantage Point.

2009 was also the year in which James Cameron's Avatar premiered with Weaver playing a major part as Dr. Grace Augustine, leader of the AVTR (avatar) program on the film's fictional moon Pandora.

Weaver also has done voice work in television and film. She had a guest role in the Futurama episode "Love and Rocket" in February 2002, playing the female Planet Express Ship. In 2006, she was the narrator for the American version of the Emmy Award-winning series Planet Earth. Also in 2006, Weaver narrated "A Matter of Degrees". A short film that plays daily at The Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks (The Wild Center) in Tupper Lake, New York. In 2008, Weaver was featured as the voice of the ship's computer in the Pixar and Disney release, WALL•E. She also voiced a narrating role in another computer-animated film, 2008's The Tale of Despereaux, based on the novel by Kate DiCamillo. Weaver has also expressed interest in starring in a fifth Alien film. Pre-production details for the film are expected to start soon. Ivan Reitman has confirmed that Weaver will reprise her role as Dana Barrett^[12] in the rumored third Ghostbusters movie due for release in 2012.^[13]

Weaver has hosted two episodes of the long-running NBC sketch show Saturday Night Live: once on the 12th season premiere in 1986, and again, on a season 35 episode in January, 2010. Weaver has now broken Madeline Kahn's record for longest gap between hosting appearances on SNL. Kahn had an 18-year gap between her second appearance in 1977 and her third and final appearance in 1995; Weaver, on the other hand, has a 24-year gap between her first appearance in 1986 and her second and most recent appearance in 2010. In March 2010 was cast for the lead role as Queen of the Vampire in Amy Heckerling's Vamps.^[14] In May 2010 was casted for the lead role Margaret Matheson in the Spanish thriller film Red Lights.^[15]

Weaver in December 2009

Personal life

Weaver was previously engaged to reporter Aaron Latham in 1967.^[16] She has been married to the filmmaker Jim Simpson since October 1, 1984. They are the parents of one daughter, Charlotte Simpson, who was born on April 13, 1990.

After making Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey, she became a supporter of The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and is now the DFGFI's honorary chairperson.^[17] Weaver is an environmentalist.^[18] In October 2006 she drew international attention through a news conference at the start of a United Nations General Assembly policy deliberation. She outlined the widespread threat to ocean habitats posed by deep-sea trawling, an industrial method for harvesting fish. She also narrated the American version of the BBC/Discovery Channel show Planet Earth.^[19][20] On April 8, 2008, she hosted the annual gala of the Trickle Up Program, a non-profit organization focusing on those in extreme poverty, mainly women and the disabled, in the Rainbow Room.

Filmography

Selected stage credits

• The Nature and Purpose of the Universe (1974, Direct Theater) as Eleanor (workshop production)^[21]
• The Constant Wife (1975, understudy) as Marie-Louise Durham^[22]
• Titanic (1976, Direct Theater) as Lidia/Annabella/Harriet^[23]
• Das Lusitania Songspiel (1976 and then 1980)
• Gemini (1976, Playwright's Horizons) as Judith Hastings
• Marco Polo Sings a Solo (1977) as Freydis
• Conjuring an Event (1978) as Annabella
• A Flea In Her Ear (1978)
• New Jerusalem (1979)
• Lone Star (1980) as Elizabeth
• Beyond Therapy (1981, Phoenix Theater) as Prudence^[24]
• As You Like It (1981) as Rosalind
• Old Times (1983) as Anna
• Hurlyburly (1984) as Darlene
• A Streetcar Named Desire (1986) as Stella Kowalski
• The Merchant of Venice (1986, Classic Stage Company) as Portia
• Sex and Longing (1996, Nederlander Theater) as Lulu^[25]
• The Guys (2001, Flea Theater) as Joan
• The Mercy Seat (2002, Acorn Theater) as Abby Prescott
• Mrs Farnsworth (2004, Flea Theater) as Marjorie Farnsworth
• Crazy Mary (2007, Playwright's Horizons) as Lydia
• Love Letters (2008, single benefit performance) as Melissa Gardner

References

External links

• Sigourney Weaver at the Internet Movie Database
• Sigourney Weaver at the Internet Broadway Database
• AskMen.com information
• BBC News article on Sigourney Weaver
• Daily Telegraph interview with Sigourney Weaver