“I don’t think my parents thought I had a future in show business because you have to be out there glad-handing and I was a very shy, introverted creature”
When Sigourney Weaver joins me on Zoom, it’s my third time in 12 months speaking to her. Coincidence? Or maybe it’s that this iconic American actor is enjoying a late-career bloom, with film roles ranging from socially conscious (Call Jane) and politically charged (Master Gardener) to technically groundbreaking (Avatar: The Way of Water). The 73-year-old is understandably delighted by the diversity. “In the old days,” she says, “if you played an older woman you were probably the stupid mother-in-law or something.”
It’s hard to imagine the statuesque, cheekbone-perfect Weaver playing the mother-in-law, stupid or otherwise. In 1979 she helped set the template for the modern action-movie heroine as Ripley in the classic sci-fi film . The second in the franchise, 1986’s , saw her nominated for her first Academy Award. In 1989 she was Oscar-nominated twice in the same year, for her real-life primatologist Dian Fossey in and her sharp-tongued business-woman in . Forget playing the sex symbol or the femme fatale, she became known for courageous, combative,
