The reason Sigourney Weaver has never directed a movie: “I don’t want to deal with those people”
It’s a mark of just how influential the movie Alien was in 1979 that trying to find a female action lead in a movie is a very tough task indeed. Sigourney Weaver blazed a trail up in space, blasting xenomorphs to pieces and instantly became one of the coolest movie stars in the process.
Ridley Scott, who directed the film, deserves some credit for the casting and simply asking ‘why can’t Ripley be a woman?’ but it is a quite astonishing performance by Weaver, who had only previously had a few small roles on stage and a bit-part in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall.
She emerged from Alien to be nominated for several awards, and critics believed she had done such sterling work on the film that she was undoubtedly ready for more major movies. She spent the next couple of years consolidating and adjusting to new found fame by appearing in plays in New York before she was cast in another huge blockbuster in 1984.
This time, it was the all-time family favourite Ghostbusters, alongside the likes of Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, in a movie that took the world by storm, Weaver’s transformation from the object of Murray’s affections to red-eyed demon lady on top of a building being one of the most impressive parts about it.
Next up she reprised her role as Ripley in Aliens, the follow up that many feel is actually a better movie than the original, and by now, seven years later, Weaver was indeed a fully-fledged action star; the movie had more of an ’80s action blockbuster feel to it and she stepped up, strapped on enormous guns and showed girls everywhere that women could mix it up on the big screen every bit as well as the likes of Stallone and Schwarzenegger.
Not that it was in any way easy for her, of course. She told the New York Times back in 2022: “Whenever I used to go to Hollywood and have to deal with these different studio heads, I was never comfortable. I always felt incredible sexism there, and a kind of resentment that they had to listen to me because I did have this power and I was smart enough to put several sentences together. I used to think, ‘Oh, it would be fun to direct, but I don’t want to have to deal with those people.’”
Weaver picked up an Academy Award nomination for her work on Aliens, and more critical acclaim came when she starred in Gorillas in the Mist in 1988 and then opposite Harrison Ford in Working Girl, picking up Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for both movies. By this point, she was up there with Jodie Foster and Meryl Streep as the most in-demand female actors in the business.
The 1990s and early 2000s brought more success for Weaver along with major award nominations for films like Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm and tragic drama A Map of the World, and anyone who did a voice over in a film as majestic as Pixar’s Wall-E gets our vote.
More recently, she’s been seen in the likes of the latest Avatar instalment, Way of Water (and she’ll be back for the following three films too), and this month appeared in the horror-thriller The Dust Bunny with Mads Mikkelsen.
It’s always important to look back at landmark films and performances and have a think about just how game-changing they were in the time they were made. Alien for example is very nearly fifty years old, yet remains as terrifying, claustrophobic and visually astonishing as it did when it burst (literally) onto the screens back in the day.
The trailer is also a masterpiece in how to make a film promo – if you haven’t watched it in a while, or you’ve never seen it, then check it out below. We’ll see you behind the sofa.
