The director Sigourney Weaver wanted to work with forever: “There’s magic about it”
Actors often strike up strong bonds with directors and work with them repeatedly throughout their careers, even if the filmmaker Sigourney Weaver named as somebody she’d happily spend the rest of her days collaborating with clearly didn’t reciprocate those feelings.
Having been a star since the late 1970s, Weaver has worked with many of the most prominent auteurs in the business. She made her debut in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, turned Ellen Ripley into an instant icon in Ridley Scott’s Alien, and then went one better when she notched the first Academy Award nomination of her career for James Cameron’s sequel.
Weaver earned another Oscar nod for Michael Apted’s Gorillas in the Mist and her third for Mike Nichols’ Working Girl, with Ivan Reitman’s Ghostbusters, Peter Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously, David Fincher’s Alien 3, Roman Polanski’s Death and the Maiden, and M Night Shyamalan’s The Village regularly teaming her up with the industry’s most distinctive auteurs.
Ironically, it’s Scott and Cameron she’s worked with the most, reuniting with the former for 1492: Conquest of Paradise and Exodus: Gods and Kings before becoming an integral part of the latter’s Avatar franchise. Ripley has been the gift that kept on giving, even if her one-and-done flirtation with Ang Lee wasn’t quite what she had in mind.
Weaver was part of the top-notch ensemble cast for Lee’s 1997 dysfunctional family drama The Ice Storm, and it was an experience she enjoyed so much that she outlined her desire to become a regular part of his repertory, which didn’t happen, seeing as they’ve never worked together again.
“I think in the second week I said, ‘You know, I don’t think I want to work with anybody else ever again,'” she told Film Scouts. “First of all, he’s so gentle. He’s so clear-sighted in the way he talks about things.” Reflecting on the time spent under his direction, Weaver marvelled: “There’s magic about it, which comes from Ang.”
Lee has made nine features since then, and precisely zero of them have featured Weaver in any capacity. She was suitably impressed by his talent and professionalism to cite him as somebody who’d have her come running at the slightest hint of an opportunity to work together again, only to end up sitting idly by the phone for over a quarter of a century waiting for a call that never came.
It sounds cruel putting it like that, but that’s why actors should never hedge their bets on any film marking the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Weaver has been a big name for over 45 years at this point, which still wasn’t enough to get her into a second Lee picture, no matter how highly she spoke of him.
