Sigourney Weaver

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Sigourney Weaver once said she felt like "a giant spider" as a girl. By the age of 11, she reportedly stood 180 cm tall. She also recalled never having "the confidence to ever think she could act".

  Weaver, born on the 8th of October 1949, became one of the most recognizable American actresses of her era. She is known for playing action heroines in blockbusters and for taking varied parts in independent films. Her accolades include a British Academy Film Award, Golden Globes and a Grammy.

  How does a self-conscious girl who towered over her classmates end up leading some of the biggest films ever made? Why does she keep returning to the theater, even after Hollywood fame? And what draws her toward projects about gorillas, whales and distant planets?

  25065

• 2. A Borrowed Name

  ›

  At the age of 14, Susan Alexandra Weaver started calling herself Sigourney, a name she took from a minor character in The Great Gatsby. She was born in New York City into a family already steeped in entertainment. Her father, Pat Weaver, was president of NBC from 1953 to 1955 and created The Today Show. Her mother, Elizabeth Inglis, was an English actress. Her uncle Doodles Weaver was a comedian and a contributor to Mad.

  She briefly attended the Brearley School and the Chapin School in New York. She then arrived at the Ethel Walker School in Simsbury, Connecticut, where her interest in performing took hold. She appeared in a school adaptation of the poem "The Highwayman". On another occasion she played a Rudolph Valentino character in an adaptation of The Sheik. One summer in Southbury, Connecticut, she joined productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and You Can't Take It with You.

  In 1967, shortly before turning 18, she visited Israel and volunteered on a kibbutz for several months. Back in the United States, she enrolled at Sarah Lawrence College. After her freshman year she moved to Stanford University, where she studied English and threw herself into theater.

  In Palo Alto she performed with a group called The Company. They staged Shakespeare plays and, in her words, "commedia dell'arte in a covered wagon" around the Bay Area. She remembered that she "dressed like an elf and lived in a tree house". She avoided Stanford's own drama department, because she found its productions too "stuffy" and "safe". She had planned to enter the English Ph.D. program and become a writer or journalist. Then the "deadly dry" honors courses wore her down. She graduated with a BA in English in 1972.

  For her Yale School of Drama audition she performed from Bertolt Brecht's Saint Joan of the Stockyards, and she was accepted. Yale proved difficult. She disliked the shows at Yale Repertory Theatre and rarely won lead roles in student productions. Some of her acting teachers called her "talentless" and urged her to stick to comedy. She said she got through thanks to the Yale Cabaret and to friends such as Christopher Durang, who kept casting her in his plays. She earned her MFA in 1974. Durang's plays would keep drawing her back for decades.

  278915

• 3. Ellen Ripley

  ›

  Before 1979, Weaver's screen work amounted to commercials, a few television roles and an appearance in the soap opera Somerset. She also had a small part in Woody Allen's Annie Hall, released in 1977. That part had started out larger, but it was cut back because she was committed to Durang's play Titanic.

  Two years later, Ridley Scott cast her in Alien. Veronica Cartwright had been lined up to co-star. She later told the World Entertainment News Network that she was in England, ready to begin work, when she learned she would play the navigator Lambert. Weaver, she discovered, had been given the lead role of Ellen Ripley.

  Reviews of Alien were initially mixed. The film has since been ranked among the greatest science fiction horror films. It became Weaver's first film inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. Critic Gene Siskel called her "an actress who should become a major star". Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote that she "begins the action looking girlish and serious, but changes into the toughly self-reliant woman who defined her subsequent roles". She was nominated for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles at the 33rd British Academy Film Awards.

  Seven years later, James Cameron directed her in the sequel Aliens, released in 1986. Roger Ebert wrote that she was "onscreen almost all the time" and "the thread that holds everything together". Variety judged that she was then the only actress who could "open" an action movie. She won the Saturn Award for Best Actress. She also received her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress and her first nomination for the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama.

  Alien 3 followed in 1992, and Ripley is now regarded as a significant female protagonist in cinema history. In 2014, Weaver voiced the character in the video game Alien: Isolation, her first time in the role in seventeen years. Ripley has a voice cameo in the main story and a central role in two add-on episodes set during the events of Alien. Most of the original cast returned for them.

  In 2015, Weaver said she would appear in another Alien sequel, provided Neill Blomkamp directed it. A sequel with Blomkamp was officially announced on the 18th of February 2015. When a fan later asked Blomkamp about its chances on Twitter, he answered with one word: "slim".

  430313241

• 4. On the Boards

  ›

  Yale students staged the first production of Stephen Sondheim's musical The Frogs in 1974, and Weaver was in the cast. Larry Blyden headlined, and her fellow students included Meryl Streep and Durang. Soon afterward she was briefly an understudy in a John Gielgud production of Captain Brassbound's Conversion. Her Broadway debut came in Somerset Maugham's The Constant Wife, where she acted opposite Ingrid Bergman.

  In 1981 she appeared off-Broadway in Durang's comedy Beyond Therapy, directed by Jerry Zaks, who was then a fledgling director. Three years later came David Rabe's Hurlyburly on Broadway, directed by Mike Nichols. The cast included William Hurt, Harvey Keitel, Cynthia Nixon, Jerry Stiller, Ron Silver and Judith Ivey. Weaver played Darlene, a scatterbrained photojournalist who gets involved with two roommates. The role earned her a Tony Award nomination.

  In 2013 she returned to Broadway in Durang's Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike at the John Golden Theatre. Her castmates were David Hyde Pierce, Kristine Nielsen and Billy Magnussen. Charles Isherwood of The New York Times wrote, "Ms. Weaver holds her own amid this skilled comic company". Marilyn Stasio of Variety wrote that she was "as funny as you've ever seen her". The production went on to win the Tony Award for Best Play at the 67th Tony Awards.

  On the 7th of May 2024, she played Masha again in a one-night benefit performance at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in Lincoln Center. Pierce and Nielsen rejoined her, along with Linda Lavin.

  That year she also made her West End debut, as Prospero in Jamie Lloyd's revival of Shakespeare's The Tempest at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. It ran from the 7th of December 2024 to the 1st of February 2025.

  2334387375

• 5. Awards Seasons

  ›

  Two very different women carried Weaver through the 1988 awards season. In Gorillas in the Mist she played the primatologist Dian Fossey. In Working Girl she played Katharine Parker, a manipulative corporate executive, opposite Harrison Ford and Melanie Griffith. At the Golden Globes she won for both performances, taking Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama and Best Supporting Actress. She was also one of three winners of Best Actress, in a three-way tie with Jodie Foster and Shirley MacLaine. She was the first of four actresses, as of 2026, to win two Golden Globes in the same year. She received two Academy Award nominations at once, for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress. She lost both.

  The 1990s gave her room to roam. She played Queen Isabella in Ridley Scott's 1492: Conquest of Paradise. She appeared in Dave opposite Kevin Kline and Frank Langella. In 1994 she took the role of Paulina Escobar in Roman Polanski's Death and the Maiden. She also appeared in Jeffrey with Nathan Lane and Patrick Stewart, and played the agoraphobic criminal psychologist Helen Hudson in Copycat in 1995.

  In 1997, Ang Lee's The Ice Storm cast her as Janey Carver, a bored but stylish housewife trapped in a failed marriage. She won the BAFTA for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and received a Golden Globe nomination. In 1999 she co-starred as Gwen DeMarco in the comedy Galaxy Quest. That year she also played Alice Goodwin in A Map of the World, a mother and school nurse whose negligence leads to a friend's toddler drowning. That role brought her third Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama. On the 16th of December 1999, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

  Recognition kept arriving. Channel 4 included her in its "100 Greatest Movie Stars" in 2003. The 2010 Scream Awards gave her The Heroine Award for her science fiction, horror and fantasy work. In 2016 she received the Donostia Award at the San Sebastian International Film Festival. In 2024 the Spanish film academy gave her the International Goya Award for "her impressive career full of unforgettable films and inspiring us by creating complex and strong female characters".

  In total she has received three Academy Award nominations, three BAFTA nominations and seven Golden Globe nominations. She has also had one Grammy nomination, four Primetime Emmy nominations, three SAG nominations and a Tony nomination. Of these, she has won a BAFTA, a Grammy and two Golden Globes.

  The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 81st Venice International Film Festival was shared with director Peter Weir. Weir had directed her much earlier in The Year of Living Dangerously, where she played British Embassy officer Jill Bryant opposite Mel Gibson. Roger Ebert wrote that she had a less interesting role there but was "always an interesting actress".

  424439798

• 6. Sequels and Returns

  ›

  Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis were her co-stars in 1984, when she took the female lead of Dana Barrett in the comedy Ghostbusters. She returned for Ghostbusters II in 1989. On the 7th of June 2019, she confirmed she would play Dana Barrett once more in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, released on the 19th of November 2021.

  In 2009 she reunited with James Cameron for Avatar. She played Dr. Grace Augustine, leader of the AVTR program on the fictional moon Pandora. The film became the highest-grossing of all time.

  Cameron brought her back for the sequels, saying that "no one ever dies in science fiction". Principal photography for Avatar: The Way of Water and Avatar: Fire and Ash began simultaneously on the 25th of September 2017. In those films she played Kiri, the daughter of Jake and Neytiri, and she also reprised Dr. Grace Augustine. The Way of Water arrived in December 2022 to critical and commercial success. It became the third-highest-grossing film of all time and earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

  The same galaxy-spanning range shows up elsewhere. She played Colonel Ward of the New Republic in the Disney and Star Wars film The Mandalorian and Grogu, released on the 22nd of May 2026. She is due to reprise both Avatar roles in Avatar 4 and Avatar 5.

  On the 6th of January 2026, it was announced that she would join Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Tomb Raider series for Amazon Prime Video in a key role. She is also set to star in the thriller Useful Idiots alongside Meryl Streep, her fellow student from the first production of The Frogs.

  1788909192

• 7. Voices and Small Screens

  ›

  In February 2002, Weaver guest-starred in the Futurama episode "Love and Rocket", playing the female Planet Express Ship. Her voice work soon grew. In 2006 she narrated the American version of the BBC's Emmy-winning documentary series Planet Earth, while the original British version was narrated by David Attenborough.

  In 2008 she voiced the ship's computer in the Pixar and Disney film WALL-E. That year she also narrated the animated film The Tale of Despereaux, which opens with her recounting the story of the pastel-hued Kingdom of Dor. In 2016 she voiced herself in a cameo in the Pixar film Finding Dory. Her narration of the National Geographic documentary Secrets of the Whales brought an Emmy Award nomination.

  Television gave her some of her most layered parts. In 2009 she starred as Mary Griffith in Prayers for Bobby, her first television film. It brought nominations for an Emmy, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

  In 2012 she played Elaine Barrish in the USA Network miniseries Political Animals. Elaine is a recently divorced Secretary of State, a former First Lady and a former Governor of Illinois. Weaver told The Hollywood Reporter that the character had some superficial resemblance to Hillary Clinton, but made decisions that distinguished her. Brian Lowry of Variety called her an inspired choice to portray someone "brimming with integrity, pain and grit all at once". The role earned nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award, the Golden Globe, the Critics' Choice Television Award and the Screen Actors Guild Award.

  In 2017 she played Alexandra, leader of the Hand, in the Netflix and Marvel miniseries The Defenders. She has also hosted Saturday Night Live twice, first on the season 12 premiere in 1986 and again in January 2010. In 2015 and 2017 she appeared as an American tourist in two episodes of the British series Doc Martin.

  In 2023 she starred in and executive-produced the Australian miniseries The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart. Robert Lloyd of the Los Angeles Times noted that she did not overplay her assumed Australian accent. The performance brought a nomination for Best Lead Actress in a Television Drama at the 13th AACTA Awards.

  5356698495

• 8. Gorillas and Home

  ›

  In 2007, Weaver returned to Rwanda for the BBC special Gorillas Revisited. She reunited with the apes from Gorillas in the Mist some twenty years after the film. The trip fits a commitment that began when the film was finished. She became a supporter of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and later its honorary chairperson. The Explorers Club honored her work, and she is considered an environmentalist.

  In October 2006, she gave a news conference at the start of a United Nations General Assembly policy deliberation. There she outlined the threat that deep-sea trawling, an industrial method of catching fish, poses to ocean habitats. On the 8th of April 2008, she hosted the annual gala of the Trickle Up Program at the Rainbow Room. The nonprofit works with people in extreme poverty, mainly women and disabled people.

  Weaver has been married to the stage director Jim Simpson since the 1st of October 1984. They live in Manhattan and founded The Flea Theater together in 1996. They have one child, born in 1990, who is an author and, as of 2024, worked as an adjunct assistant professor at the Digital Storytelling Lab of the Columbia University School of the Arts.

  In a 2010 interview, Weaver said she had gone through therapy to ease her guilt over traveling so often for work. She said that going to New Zealand to make Avatar while her child was applying to colleges "almost killed me". In Simpson's 2002 film adaptation of the play The Guys, he and their child appear as the husband and child of Weaver's character.

  Weaver is close friends with the actresses Jamie Lee Curtis and Selina Cadell. In a 2015 interview, Curtis admitted to Weaver that she had never seen all of Alien, because she was too scared.

  55141927