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Home , Elizabeth Inglis, Sigourney Weaver

Button-front dress by Bottega Veneta

Sigourney Weaver The statuesque star and sci-fi legend looks back on her extraordinary career, from her early days off-Broadway to the iconic roles that sent her stratospheric

Portrait Mark Peckmezian Styling Emma Wyman Words Hannah Lack

New York is notoriously oblivious to its celebrities, but even here, changes the weather of a room when she enters. Tall, slender, with the bone structure of one of Truman Capote’s society “swans”, she has none of the icicle chill; she’s warm, funny and disarmingly curious when we meet on an ash-coloured, wintry afternoon in the days before Christmas. Untying a scarlet scarf, she chooses the corner table of a mirrored dining room tucked in the back of a fancy Upper East Side patisserie displaying towers of pastel- coloured macaroons in its windows. This blue-blooded, upscale neighbourhood – home to the mansions of Vanderbilt, Carnegie and Whitney – is etched into Weaver’s past: she may be Hollywood royalty but she’s a New Yorker born and bred, coming into the world just blocks from here in 1949, and growing up in a series of homes scattered across the Upper East Side. “And I’m still here!” she says, looking a decade younger than her 65 years, despite a career that has sent her hurtling into the outer reaches of the universe; onscreen, she’s faced demonic ghosts, serial killers, 400-pound gorillas, extra-terrestrials and transformed into a blue, chain-smoking 22nd-century botanist as ’s Grace Augustine. It all began, famously, in a fight to the death with an acid-blooded Xenomorph in ’s 1979 sci-fi . As the sole survivor aboard the Nostromo space-tug, she lived to make three sequels and revolutionised action movies in the process. The taciturn, no-nonsense toughness Weaver brought to Warrant Officer gave cinema its first feminist in space, a flame-wielding intergalactic warrior – no shrieking or cute outfits or romantic interest – who paved the way for Terminator’s Sarah Connor, Buffy and beyond. Hollywood conventions have rarely applied to Weaver: an action hero with degrees from Stanford and Yale, she out-muscled Schwarzenegger at the box office at the same time as focusing her light-bulb intellect on arthouse fare with the likes of , and . She’s as likely to show up in an experimental off-off Broadway play as a summer blockbuster. And if there’s a lack of rom-com in her filmography, you can forgive directors for rarely casting her in “ordinary” roles; it’s hard to imagine Weaver as anything but extraordinary, and no surprise Helmut Newton delighted in photographing the statuesque beauty, shooting the camera a maniacal grin atop a mountain of unspooled celluloid, clad in PVC gloves up to her elbows 1. Queens, astronauts, political leaders, trailblazing zoologists... “Well, anyone who works with me knows that I’m totally up for anything,” Weaver laughs. “Just about…”

1. Helmut Newton first shot Weaver in in 1983. “We had a terrible first day,” she says. “I disagreed with everything he said. We had a drink afterwards and I said something stupid like, ‘I’m not a puppet!’ He laughed. And we started communicating. He was so funny – he used to keep fake nipples in his top pocket! Helmut opened up whole new vistas for me, in terms of opening Pandora’s box and not being afraid of what’s inside. I’ve never worked with a director who made me feel that way.”

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The actress’s early years whisper of privilege, spent between The teenage Weaver originally planned to become a a series of Manhattan abodes and old-moneyed Sands Point, on journalist. An English degree at Stanford tumbled her headlong Long Island’s north shore. She attended the elite Chapin School into 1969 California at its most political, volatile and exhilarating: on the Upper East Side, a private girl’s school with an alumni of “You couldn’t not get involved,” she remembers. “Reagan was America’s most illustrious surnames: a Hearst, a Trump, a Pulitzer governor, everyone was being called up with the draft… I was and Jacqueline Bouvier all passed through its doors. But aged part of a guerrilla theatre group called The Company, taking 12, Weaver might have seemed an unlikely candidate for the Shakespeare in a covered wagon around the Bay Area. We were Walk of Fame. At that time she was still Susan Weaver (christened anti-establishment, commedia dell’arte, ‘bring it to the people’.” after adventurer and family friend Susan Pretzlik), a self- Is it true in those years she lived in a tree house and dressed as confessed misfit kid, already an awkward 5’11” with unruly hair an elf? “Yes, I did do that,” Weaver laughs. “Sometimes I dressed and her nose in a book. “I was this tall, which was tough,” she as a tiger, though.” remembers. “People would assume I was much older, and Acting, however, was still just a hobby: ”I backed into this expect me to be mature – which is something that still hasn’t totally,” she says. “I was driven, but I don’t know that I was driven quite happened for me!” to become an actress. I thought, I’ll just run around and audition Perhaps the turning point began with a name; at 14, she for these drama schools, I’m sure they’ll turn me down.” Instead plucked the more flamboyant Sigourney from a minor character they all accepted, and she headed back east to Yale – Meryl in , deciding someone of her height demanded Streep was a fellow student. But while Streep trod the boards in a more sinuous sobriquet – her parents opted to call her “S” in a number of leading roles, the venerable establishment didn’t case it was a passing phase. Her mother and father were believe they had a future star on their hands in Weaver. “They something of an intoxicating double-act: Sylvester Weaver was didn’t know where to put me. I was funny, and Yale was not a very California-born to a wealthy roofing contractor, and he hung out funny place,” she says. “I think there was some cruelty going on with the likes of Carole Lombard and Loretta Young before there. At the end of the first year, half my class were thrown out, becoming president of NBC in 1953, during the formative days of and we were put on probation.” Did their obvious lack of faith television. Responsible for inventing both the Today and Tonight give her the determination to continue? “Determination is a nice shows, he was fêted for his intelligent approach to programming. word for it. I hung in there out of spite!” she laughs. After Yale, Weaver’s mother, , was English – a Colchester- Weaver returned to New York, rented a basement flat and began born actress who trained at RADA with Vivien Leigh and became to immerse herself in the city’s buoyant theatrical scene, taking to part of the Liverpool Repertory Company before heading for the the stage in her friends’ plays: “Unpaid, but fun! To be frank, my West End. She’d had a fleeting part in The 39 Steps and co-starred parents thought, she’ll do this for a bit and then get a job at with in The Letter and she set foot in New York just as Bloomingdale’s.” war broke out. “They met at a party – there were so many parties Onscreen, Weaver’s credits hadn’t stretched far beyond a in those days!” begins Weaver, tucking into a lunchtime croque Budweiser ad and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in 2, monsieur. “She was in a play with at the time.” before she auditioned (in thigh-high “hooker boots”) for a young Weaver wed Inglis soon after, despite competition from a director named Ridley Scott. When he unleashed the dark, grimy swashbuckling thespian: “She went out with Errol Flynn for a space thriller that sent her stratospheric, she was so new to the number of years and he was desperate to marry her,” Weaver camera that Scott had to remind her not to look into it. Alien shot remembers. “In fact, I have a telegram dated right after my her straight from unknown, too-tall, off-Broadway actress to parents got married. It says, ‘Dear Liz, you’re still the most beautiful Hollywood superstar overnight. “When I got Alien, I wasn’t girl in the world to me, Errol.’” Inglis sounds like a character looking to have a film career. I wanted to be a ‘legitimate’ Weaver might play onscreen: a beautiful actress who could also actress, do repertory like my mother had. I remember thinking, kick ass on the tennis court: “My mother was amazing, she could don’t worry, it’s a small film, it’s cool and edgy, kind of like an off- have done anything,” Weaver nods. “She got into Wimbledon at off Broadway movie.” (Being Weaver, she put herself into 16, but her father wouldn’t let her play. She was a great athlete, character by imagining she was playing Henry V on Mars, and she had such determination, discipline… she was a force!” But this drew inspiration from the female warriors of classic Chinese Opposite page: Sigourney Weaver, Italian Vogue, Los Angeles 1983 by Helmut Newton © Estate of Helmut Newton/Maconochie Photography of Helmut Newton Helmut © Estate 1983 by Angeles Los Vogue, Italian Weaver, page:Opposite Sigourney was the 50s; after her marriage, she retired to raise Sigourney literature.) Her character was famously written as a man originally and her brother, Trajan, becoming hostess to a shifting circle of until a last-minute switch was made to wrong-foot the audience. Manhattanites: “Not so much actors – my father was always “They thought, no one will ever think the girl’s going to survive! making fun of actors! But a lot of writers and funny people came But I was very comfortable with a strong female role, that’s my by. We had a lot of laughs.” time, it was all about women’s lib. I’d been put in a baby blue

2. A little-known early role was given to Weaver by , who offered her the second lead in Annie Hall. She turned it down due to theatre commitments (she was playing a multiple schizophrenic who kills her own parents in ’s play Titanic). Allen asked her to cameo instead, and she briefly appears as Alvy’s new girlfriend outside a cinema showing The Sorrow and the Pity.

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space costume and Ridley took one look at me and said, ‘You look like fucking Jackie O in space!’ We went into this room filled with NASA flight suits and I just pulled this old one out. Ripley is not a sexy space babe. I never worried how I looked, I worried about getting down the corridors fast enough to escape the explosions!” Still, the crumpled grey flight suit didn’t prevent Weaver from becoming sci-fi’s ultimate and most enduring pin-up, and when that suit is removed in the penultimate scenes, a certain section of her audience was forever hooked: “You don’t want to know!” she smiles, when asked about the fan mail she gets. “People do write really crazy things. has very… passionate fans. I tend not to read it any more. It’s a very, very weird thing.” Aged 30, her sudden A-list status the Year of Living Dangerously by director PETER WEIR seemed to make no difference to Weaver’s plans; she journeyed straight from outer ALIEN4 by director RIDLEY SCOTT space to perform in a cult - “Ripley is not a sexy space babe. I never worried about how I looked, I worried Kurt Weill cabaret that opened at 11pm off- about getting down the corridors fast enough to escape the explosions!” Broadway, co-written with Yale buddy, playwright Christopher Durang. “It’s actually a great asset to go into the business if you’ve been around it,” she says of her insouciance in the face of Hollywood. “You know that it’s not the answer. That fame is not a good thing, necessarily.” But the film offers began to stack up; soon she was flying to the

Top: Archives du 7e Art/DR. Bottom: Archives Top: Pictures/Getty Columbia Images Philippines to play a chic British attaché

Top: © Sunset Boulevard/Corbis. Bottom: Portfolio/Getty Mondadori Images Boulevard/Corbis. © Sunset Top: opposite newcomer ’s hungry foreign correspondent in Peter Weir’s tale of political intrigue in the tropics, The Year of Living Dangerously3. Her comic ability got its first showcasing in ’s goofy Deal of the Century with Chevy Chase, before slime and marshmallow goo delivered Weaver another mega-hit in . The role of Dana Barrett was secured with a particularly enthusiastic stab at auditioning: “Coming from the theatre, I didn’t realise that when Dana turns into the terror dog, they were going GHOSTBUSTERS by director to do it with special effects. So I became a dog in the audition, jumping around the

3. The Year of Living Dangerously depicted the bloody rise to power of President Suharto in Indonesia in 4. The Alien franchise turned Weaver into a 1965. Made on location in the Philippines, the crew were forced to decamp to Australia after Mel Gibson, Hollywood legend. “There were five of us on the Weaver and Weir received death threats from Islamic extremists. “It was a hard shoot, but I embraced it,” shortlist, including . My parents were she says. “Afterwards I decided I loved film because you never know what’ll happen.” completely gobsmacked when I had a hit.” ALIENS by director

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couch, gnawing at the cushions and howling. Ivan Reitman turned These days, Weaver is family to the likes of Ridley Scott and the tape off and went, ‘Don’t ever do that again! It’s so grotesque, James Cameron: posters for Scott’s latest, Exodus, starring an editor might want to use it.’” Weaver as an Egyptian queen, plaster Manhattan when we Comedy, Weaver says, is what she relishes most – and she’s meet, evidence of their continued collaboration 35 years on. The proved herself a good sport when it comes to satirising her own back-to-back shooting of Avatars 2, 3 and 4 is also hovering sci-fi work on the likes of . (“Beautiful and somewhere on the horizon. Meanwhile a new generation of willing to be sublimely silly,” as Durang described her.) The comic filmmakers is seeking her out. Last year she flew to South Africa gene she traces back to her uncle, “Doodles” Weaver, a rubber- for ’s new feature Chappie after admiring District faced 50s comedian. “Comedy was king in my family,” she says. 9, his powerful study of xenophobia and social segregation At school, towering over her fellow pupils, Weaver had masquerading as sci-fi. Playing the ruthless head of a weapons transformed herself into class clown (she was crowned “Freshman company she joins a cast that includes bombastic South African Fink” one year). In the film business, her height ensured Weaver rap-rave duo Die Antwoord. “I was dying to work with Neill, took the path less travelled, avoiding the more conventional probably more than anyone I could think of,” she says. “To use corners of the business and working instead with many of its risk- this medium and genre for less adventure and more social takers. “I think the only thing Ripley kept me from doing, was comment is wonderful. We shot in Johannesburg and it’s rough being in love stories,” she muses. “I was a little too intimidating and tumble.” Blomkamp has confessed that watching Alien as a for a lot of normal producers who wanted a tiny, blonde, blue- kid was a formative moment – Ripley casts a long shadow. But eyed girl.” Weaver seems to have nothing but affection for the character Her range was crystallised in 1989 when Weaver found herself today – she’s kept all of Ripley’s costumes, as well as a baby Oscar-nominated in both best actress and best supporting actress alien or two. “Old costumes can be like ghosts’ clothing – but I categories: the former for the fiery real-life zoologist like having Ripley’s,” she says. “The great thing about the big DEATH AND THE MAIDEN6 by director ROMAN POLANSKI in Michael Apted’s – isolated in a dilapidated movies I’ve done is they’ve allowed me to do lots of small movies. cabin 12,000ft up a Rwandan mountain – and the latter as the And they still do.” hair-sprayed, cut-throat corporate climber Katherine Parker in They’ve also allowed Weaver to champion her abiding love “The only thing Ripley kept me from doing was love stories. I was a little too ’s effervescent Wall Street fable . She of the stage. Nineteen years ago, her husband of 30 years, intimidating for a lot of producers who wanted a tiny, blonde, blue-eyed girl” won for both at the Golden Globes: “This is one for the bad girls,” theatre director Jim Simpson, founded lively Tribeca theatre The she joked, picking up her award in a fire-engine-red gown. The Flea (motto: raising “a joyful hell in a small space”) 5. It has pattern of balancing big budget (James Cameron’s Aliens had attracted a handful of big stars to its minute stage – Tim Robbins, scooped her a previous Oscar nomination), with arthouse and Bill Murray, Weaver herself – but its real remit is to act as a kind theatre continued: a traumatised torture victim seeking revenge of experimental greenhouse allowing new work to germinate. in Roman Polanski’s darkly claustrophobic Death and the Maiden “The Flea is one of the things I’m proudest of. My husband picks was swiftly followed by a sardonic 70s Connecticut housewife – all all these brilliant young people in New York. It’s wild,” she says, jangly earrings, chain-link belts and sheer pink lipstick – in Ang picking up her phone and arranging tickets for the night’s show: Lee’s . “I am all over the place!” she agrees. “Well “Ten dollars and you get a free beer!” a long time ago, I thought, I’m not going to go after the part, I’ll Later that evening, despite a thunderous downpour of rain, Top: © AF archive/Alamy. Bottom: Photograph by DDP, Camera Press London Press Camera DDP, by Bottom: Photograph © AF archive/Alamy. Top: look for the story. It doesn’t matter how big or small my part is, or The Flea is a cosy beacon of activity. Drinks are dispensed in the the genre, or anything else, I’ll just be involved.” small reception area before an audience spanning young and It’s a strategy that has led to a choppy, fascinating career: old are beckoned through a curtain into a tiny theatre. Watching during the course of the afternoon, she relates stories that range the play that night, a mesmerising two-hander, is like completing from the lesson Bill Murray taught her: “I’d try and seriously the circle: a visceral glimpse into the intense camaraderie, prepare for a scene and Bill would come over and start tickling adrenaline and creativity that fired the youthful Sigourney. For me. You had to give up all pretence of being an actor”, to a the 150 or so young actors here, she’s built the artistic home she defining moment in the Virunga mountain range when she first wished she’d had in those early years bouncing from one theatre met the wild creatures that would become her co-stars in Gorillas to another, cutting her teeth on the New York scene. Her in the Mist: “I guess the producers wanted to find out if I’d go championing of a new generation also contains a ripple from the screaming down the mountain. I was so lucky. I had gorillas all past; a reminder of her mother’s days amongst the players at over me, jumping up and down, urinating on me. Even when I was Liverpool rep, and the path Weaver had imagined following charged and hit by a silverback, I knew it wasn’t personal. He before an extra-terrestrial sent her career spinning into a The ice storm by director ANG LEE was just in a bad mood…” different orbit.

5. Weaver married theatre director Jim Simpson in 1984 at her father Sylvester Weaver’s Long Island Yacht 6. To play a torture victim in Roman Polanski’s dark 1994 drama Death and the Maiden, the actress went club, with Bill Murray among the guests. Simpson was a child actor before becoming an award-winning method for the first time, after the Polish director introduced her to acclaimed teacher Jack Waltzer, who theatre director and founding Off-Off The Flea. They have a 25-year-old daughter, had studied with method pioneers Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler. “Roman read everyone’s parts aloud Charlotte, who recently published a young adult novel about a highschooler with Demonologist parents. at the beginning. That film was sort of the drama school education I felt I never got at Yale.”

246 AnOther Magazine 247 Snakeskin coat by Salvatore Ferragamo; Sigourney Weaver Wide-leg trousers by Paul Smith; Leather brogues by CHURCH’S

Gorillias In the Mist7 by director MICHAEL APTED

“I was so lucky. I had gorillas jumping and urinating all over me. When I was charged and hit by a silverback it wasn’t personal. He was just in a bad mood” Opposite page: Photograph Mark Peckmezian Mark page:Opposite Photograph Top: © Murray Close/Sygma/Corbis. Bottom: 12/Alamy Close/Sygma/Corbis. © Photos © Murray Top:

Avatar by director JAMES CAMERON

7. Weaver played conservationist Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist in 1988. Today she is honorary Hair Maury Hopson; Make-up Sandy Linter at Warren/Tricomi Salon for chairperson of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, after being captivated by the creatures in Lancôme; Photographic assistants Andrew McGill, Mike Feswick; Styling . “This little gorilla comes over and leans against me and it was amazing, so casual. She assistants Alexis Kanter, Cassie Walker; Special thanks The Flea Theatre accepted me. The feeling of her next to me, the heat of her little arm, is something I’ll never forget.”

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