Sigourney Weaver

Sigourney Weaver (born October 8, 1949, New York City, New York, U.S.) is an American actress who has played an eclectic range of characters but is perhaps best known for her portrayals of strong independent women, notably Ellen Ripley, the no-nonsense resourceful heroine in the landmark science-fiction film Alien (1979) and its sequels.

Early life and education

Weaver was born into the world of New York City’s media elite. Her father, Sylvester (“Pat”) Weaver, served as president of NBC in the 1950s, a period of dramatic expansion for the broadcast network, and her mother, Elizabeth Inglis, was an English actress whose credits include the Alfred Hitchcock thriller The 39 Steps (1935) and The Letter (1940), a Bette Davis vehicle directed by William Wyler. At age 14 Weaver rechristened herself Sigourney after a character in the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel The Great Gatsby. By that point she had already achieved her full height of 5 feet 11 inches (1.8 meters), and she felt that the name Susan was too short for someone so tall.

After earning an undergraduate degree in English (1972) from Stanford University, Weaver studied drama at Yale. Actress Meryl Streep and playwrights Christopher Durang, Wendy Wasserstein, and Albert Innaurato were among her contemporaries. Weaver received little encouragement from teachers, who claimed that she lacked the talent required for a career in acting. Instead, it was the mentorship and collaborations provided by her playwright friends that would prove instrumental to her early professional success.

Following her graduation from Yale in 1974, Weaver focused on the stage. She acted in Innaurato’s play Gemini (1976) and in several works by Durang, including Titanic (1976), a sex farce in which Weaver played a woman with dissociative identity disorder. Das Lusitania Songspiel (1976), which she and Durang wrote, is a cabaret in the style of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. In addition, during this time Weaver made her film debut, appearing as a walk-on in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977). But it was through her stage work that Weaver came to the attention of actor Warren Beatty, who recommended her to Ridley Scott, the director of Alien (1979).

Stardom: Alien, Ghostbusters, and Working Girl

Produced in the wake of Star Wars (1977), Alien was a darker, more sinister take on the genre of the space fantasy-adventure film, as evidenced by its tagline: “In Space No One Can Hear You Scream.” As the steely Ripley, an officer of a commercial spaceship whose crew is killed off one person at a time by a mysterious predatory alien, Weaver inhabited a role that was originally written for a man. Alien was a blockbuster, grossing more than $75 million in the United States at the time of its initial release, and the 29-year-old Weaver became a household name. The film also launched a successful franchise that included three other films starring Weaver: Aliens (1986), for which she received her first Academy Award nomination for best actress; Alien 3 (1992), directed by David Fincher; and Alien: Resurrection (1997).

As she became one of the biggest female movie stars of the 1980s, Weaver often sought out diverse roles in a wide range of genres. Her notable films from this period include Peter Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), a drama set in Indonesia during political turmoil. Weaver was cast as a British attaché who begins a relationship with an Australian journalist (Mel Gibson). In the biopic Gorillas in the Mist (1988), Weaver portrayed American zoologist Dian Fossey and earned another Oscar nomination for best actress.

A gifted comedian, Weaver accepted the supporting role of a possessed cellist in Ghostbusters (1984), which was a huge hit. She reprised the character in Ghostbusters II (1989), Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (2016), and Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021). Weaver’s other films from the 1980s include Mike Nichols’s romantic comedy Working Girl (1988). For her performance as a scheming Wall Street executive, Weaver received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress.

Get Unlimited Access

Try Britannica Premium for free and discover more.

Subscribe

Later films

In the 1990s Weaver continued to appear in film comedies, often taking on roles that both reinforced and commented on the characteristics audiences and the film industry had come to associate with her. In the cult hit Galaxy Quest (1999), for example, Weaver starred as Gwen DeMarco, a TV actor, who, along with her costars, is mistaken by aliens for the character she played in a Star Trek-like TV series and is enlisted to battle on their behalf. Her other comedies in the decade include Dave (1993), in which Weaver played a first lady whose icy contempt for her husband, the U.S. president (Kevin Kline), thaws over the course of the film. Weaver and Kline later starred in the acclaimed The Ice Storm (1997), a period piece about Watergate-era suburban malaise directed by Ang Lee. Weaver was cast as an unfaithful wife whose cold exterior hides a deep loneliness. The two actors also reunited decades later, starring in the comedy The Good House (2021).

In the 2000s Weaver reteamed with James Cameron, the director and cowriter of Aliens, to play Dr. Grace Augustine in Avatar (2009), a science-fiction fantasy that set box-office records upon its release. In the sequel, Avatar: Way of the Water (2022), Weaver played Kiri, Dr. Augustine’s 14-year-old Na’vi daughter. For her portrayal of a teenager, Weaver was assisted by Cameron’s use of de-aging technologies and computer-generated imagery (CGI) that altered her appearance.

Weaver’s other notable films include the horror-thriller The Cabin in the Woods (2011) and The Meyerowitz Stories (2017), a dramedy directed by Noah Baumbach. In the period drama Call Jane (2022), she played an abortion-rights activist before Roe v. Wade (1973). Weaver also lent her voice to such animated movies as WALL∙E (2008), The Tale of Despereaux (2008), and Finding Dory (2016).

Theater

Throughout her decades-long career in film, Weaver continued to perform onstage. Her Broadway credits include David Rabe’s Hurlyburly (1984), for which she received a Tony Award nomination, and Sex and Longing (1996) and Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (2013), both written by Christopher Durang.

Personal life

In 1984 Weaver married theater director James Simpson. Twelve years later the couple and others founded the Flea, an Off-Off-Broadway theater, for which Simpson served as the artistic director. Simpson and Weaver have one daughter, Charlotte Simpson.