A career in three acts: The roles that define Sigourney Weaver
Sigourney Weaver’s career is as unconventional as it is impressive. Carving a mould for what a female-led action movie can look like in the late 1970s through an impressive list of works over five decades, navigating her way through comedy, drama, science fiction and thrillers to become one of the most significant actors ever to lend their talents to the big screen.
That might seem like hyperbole, but it’s hard to equate the correct words to Weaver’s stunning career. The actor changed the way women were viewed in cinema with her career-defining role in Ridley Scott’s Alien, reprising the role of Ellen Ripley three additional times, including in sequels by James Cameron and David Fincher, making her character increasingly memorable despite the waning quality of the films themselves.
Across a range of different genres and styles, Weaver showed herself to be more than the ass-kicking Ripley. She would pick up the comedic role of Dana Barrett in Ghostbusters, the more brutish smirk of Katharine Parker in Working Girl, the unexpected devilish cameo in The Cabin in the Woods and the gripping performance of Paulina Escobar in Death and the Maiden.
However, these three roles will define the majestic career of Sigourney Weaver forevermore.
The roles that define Sigourney Weaver’s career:
Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)
It’d be impossible to put any list of Weaver’s performances together without mentioning the role she is likely most well-known for. In Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror classic, Alien, Weaver plays protagonist Ellen Ripley, part of the crew of The Nostromo, a space-faring cargo ship on a voyage back to Earth in the far future. Aboard the dark, atmospheric hulk of a ship, which is more akin to a submarine than the Enterprise, the crew are hunted and killed by an otherworldly creature, the Xenomorph, whose unstoppable persistence to wreak havoc and instil terror on the ship’s ragtag crew (and on the audience), has earned the film a worthy place in cinema history.
Alien is inventive in its horror, iconic in its display of practical special effects and brimming with a long-lasting litany of memorable scenes. The film wouldn’t, however, be nearly as compelling without Weaver, whose steadfast and powerful performance as Ripley makes for a masterclass in embodying strength, vulnerability and intelligence in equal measure.
Weaver not only challenged and redefined the idea of gender roles within horror and action films, but she did so while delivering a performance that shows a character growing from caution to fearlessness, relying not on ego or bravado but on instinct and intelligence.
Ripley’s victory at the end of the film feels earned, and Weaver’s demonstration of the blend and complexity of a human character when faced with something truly unhuman is why the film is still revered today, and why the franchise remains one of the most exciting still.
Gorillas in the Mist (Michael Apted, 1988)
Ten years on from Alien and directly off the back of a successful James Cameron-led sequel, Weaver is an established entity in Hollywood. Refusing to be defined by typecasting, the actor would take on a biopic of primatologist Diane Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist, directed by Michael Apted.
The film tells the story of Fossey becoming increasingly attached to the gorillas she is studying in Africa and her increasingly confrontational approach to dealing with would-be poachers. The exploration of Fossey’s passion, dedication, determination, and eventual tragic murder is a powerful depiction of her devotion to wildlife and her activism.
Weaver’s performance in Gorillas in the Mist earned her a nomination for ‘Best Actress’ at the Academy Awards. That same year, she was also nominated for ‘Best Supporting Actress’ for her role alongside Harrison Ford in the romantic comedy Working Girl.
Avatar (James Cameron, 2009)
Reuniting with visionary filmmaker James Cameron for his groundbreaking film Avatar, which saw an early example of the effects mastery that the movie’s eventual sequel would display, Weaver would once again dive into the world of science fiction, this time playing the part of the alien herself, through the film’s use of nine foot tall, blue ‘Avatars’ that allowed visitors to the lush world of Pandora to live among the native Na’vi.
Avatar allowed Weaver to be at the forefront of a still-emerging new facet of filmmaking, motion capture, the method of accurately recording an actor’s movements and performance to then map onto a fully digital character, allowing truly transformative roles to be performed. Despite being used to great effect in the Lord of the Rings trilogy of films, with the character of Gollum, the more expansive use of the technology was groundbreaking and showcased Weaver’s ability to adapt to a constantly changing landscape within Hollywood, instead of resting on her laurels and past performance, the actor chose instead to help pave the path for a new method of performance, one that has seen ever-increasing use in the years since Avatar demonstrated it’s burgeoning potential for aiding in storytelling.
Sigourney Weaver is an actor who holds the rare accolade of being a true pop culture icon. As has been the case with her entire career, she shows no sign of letting that status slow her down.
