Sigourney Weaver
Sigourney Weaver in 1989
Birth name	Susan Alexandra Weaver
Born	October 8, 1949 (1949-10-08) (age 57) Manhattan, New York City
Spouse(s)	Jim Simpson (1984-)
Awards BAFTA Awards Best Supporting Actress 1997 The Ice Storm Golden Globe Awards Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama 1989 Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture 1989 Working Girl Other Awards Saturn Award for Best Actress (film) 1986 Aliens

Sigourney Weaver (born Susan Alexandra Weaver on October 8, 1949 in New York City) is an Oscar-nominated American actress. (She may have other names: she once told friends at Stanford that she had several names, two of which were "Susan".)

Early life

Weaver is the daughter of late NBC television executive Pat Weaver and Desirée Hawkins Ingles, a British actress. Her uncle, Doodles Weaver, was a comedian and actor.

She began using the name Sigourney Weaver in 1963, after a character in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby[citation needed] (in Chapter 3, golfer Jordan Baker tells Nick that her telephone number is listed under her aunt, Mrs. Sigourney Howard, who never appears in the book or movie). She attended the prestigious Ethel Walker School, a prep school in Simsbury, Connecticut, graduated from Stanford University, and studied law at Harvard Law School, then drama at Yale School of Drama, where she appeared in original plays by friend and classmate Christopher Durang. She later appeared in the 1981 off-Broadway production of his comedy Beyond Therapy.

Film career

Although Weaver has played a number of critically acclaimed roles in movies like 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. Her first appearance as Ripley was in Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien. She reprised the role in two sequels, Aliens and Alien³. She also played Ripley 8 (a clone of the original Ripley) in Alien: Resurrection. She was nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award for portraying Ripley in Aliens. Ripley was a breakthrough role: the first female action hero. Although Ripley is tender and nurturing with a cat or a child, she is tough and aggressive with adult humans and alien monsters, and ruthless enough to blow up her own ship or a planetary colony; in the third film, she destroys herself to prevent the xenomorph species from spreading.

Weaver also appeared in Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II as Dana Barrett. She played the role of the agoraphobic criminal psychologist Helen Hudson in the 1995 movie Copycat, and went on to become the most highly paid actress of the 1990s. In addition to her trademark role as Ripley, Weaver has recently concentrated on smaller, more challenging roles such as 1999's A Map of the World and 2006's Snowcake. Critics have also noted her consistent performances in comedic roles, such as in Jeffrey (1994) and Heartbreakers (2001), in which she starred with Jennifer Love Hewitt.

In 2003, Weaver 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).

In 2006, Weaver returned to Rwanda for the BBC special Gorillas Revisited.

Bryan Singer originally wanted Weaver to play the lead villainess role of Emma Frost in X-Men: The Last Stand. But after Singer left the project to direct Superman Returns, the story changed considerably and the part of Emma Frost was dropped entirely from the script.[citation needed]

Dual nominations

In addition to her Academy Award nomination for Aliens, Weaver has received two other nominations in her career, both in 1988. This makes Weaver one of only ten actors and actresses to have received two nominations in the same year. Weaver received a Best Actress nomination for her role as gorilla conservationist Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist and a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her role as Katharine Parker in Working Girl opposite Harrison Ford and Melanie Griffith. She did not win either nomination, but was awarded a Golden Globe for each role.

Personal life

Weaver married theater director Jim Simpson (The Flea Theater) in 1984. They have one child, Charlotte Simpson, who was born in 1990.

After making Gorillas in the Mist, she became a supporter of The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and is now the DFGFI's honorary chairperson.[1]

Weaver is an environmentalist. [2] 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 Discovery Channel show Planet Earth, which focuses on the wonders of our world.[3] [4]

Weaver is notable for her stature, standing 6' (1.83 m) tall. She is also notable for her wardrobe: She appears at many awards shows, wearing dresses by famous designers. At one time in the 1990s, two magazines appointed her Best Dressed and Worst Dressed, respectively.[citation needed]

Popular culture

The Italian lesbian science-fiction comics character Legs Weaver is inspired by Sigourney Weaver's role in Alien.

In 2007, Weaver reprised her role of Ellen Ripley in a commercial for DirecTV. In the commercial, Weaver, in the power loader vehicle from the movie Aliens, is battling the queen xenomorph while explaining to watchers how DirecTV is a better deal than cable.

Filmography

See also

• List of famous tall women

References

External links

• Sigourney Weaver at the Internet Movie Database
• Sigourney Weaver at the Internet Broadway Database
• Sigourney Weaver at the Notable Names Database
• AskMen.com information
• BBC News article on Sigourney Weaver