1. Susan Alexandra "Sigourney" Weaver is an American actress.
65 Facts About Sigourney Weaver
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Sigourney Weaver is the recipient of numerous accolades, including a British Academy Film Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Grammy Award, in addition to nominations for three Academy Awards, four Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award.
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Sigourney Weaver made her screen debut with a minor role in the romantic comedy film Annie Hall, before landing her breakthrough role as Ellen Ripley in the science fiction horror film Alien.
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Sigourney Weaver reprised the role in the sequel Aliens earning a landmark nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress, and in two more films for the franchise.
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In 1989, Sigourney Weaver won two Golden Globes and two simultaneous Oscar nominations for her roles as Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist and a young associate in Working Girl ; she became the first actor to win two Golden Globes for acting in the same year.
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Sigourney Weaver then won the British Academy Film Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Ice Storm.
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Sigourney Weaver had voice roles in the Pixar animated films WALL-E and Finding Dory.
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Susan Alexandra Sigourney Weaver was born in New York City on October 8,1949, the daughter of English actress Elizabeth Inglis and American television executive Pat Sigourney Weaver.
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Sigourney Weaver's father served as president of NBC from 1953 to 1955, during which time he created The Today Show.
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Pat's brother, Doodles Sigourney Weaver, was a comedian and contributor to Mad.
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Sigourney Weaver is of Dutch, English, German and Scottish descent through her father.
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At the age of 14, Weaver began using the name "Sigourney" after she took it from a minor character in The Great Gatsby.
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Sigourney Weaver briefly attended the Brearley School and Chapin School in New York before arriving at the Ethel Walker School in Simsbury, Connecticut, where she developed an early interest in performing.
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Sigourney Weaver was involved in theatrical productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and You Can't Take It with You during one summer in Southbury, Connecticut.
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In 1967, shortly before turning 18, Sigourney Weaver visited Israel and volunteered on a kibbutz for several months.
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Sigourney Weaver performed with a group in Palo Alto named The Company, doing Shakespeare plays and "commedia dell'arte in a covered wagon" around the Bay Area, the nature of which she considered "outrageous".
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Sigourney Weaver eventually graduated in 1972 with a BA in English.
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Sigourney Weaver subsequently applied to the Yale School of Drama, performing Bertolt Brecht's Saint Joan of the Stockyards at her audition, and was accepted.
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Sigourney Weaver admitted that she had a difficult time at Yale.
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Sigourney Weaver was not fond of the shows at Yale Repertory Theatre, and had little luck getting lead roles in school productions.
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Sigourney Weaver later said she pulled through due to her time at the Yale Cabaret, and with the help of friends such as Christopher Durang, who kept casting her in his plays.
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Sigourney Weaver graduated from Yale with an MFA in 1974.
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Sigourney Weaver performed in the first production of the Stephen Sondheim musical The Frogs while at Yale in 1974, alongside Larry Blyden and fellow students Meryl Streep and Durang.
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Sigourney Weaver was briefly an understudy in a John Gielgud production of Captain Brassbound's Conversion thereafter.
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Cartwright stated to World Entertainment News Network that she was in England ready to start work on Alien when she discovered that she would be playing the navigator Lambert in the project, and Sigourney Weaver had been given the lead role of Ellen Ripley.
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Sigourney Weaver appeared in an off-Broadway production of Durang's comedy Beyond Therapy in 1981, which was directed by then-fledgling director Jerry Zaks.
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Sigourney Weaver next appeared opposite Mel Gibson as British Embassy officer Jill Bryant in the Peter Weir directed romantic drama The Year of Living Dangerously which was released to critical acclaim.
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Roger Ebert opined, "Sigourney Weaver has a less interesting role but is always an interesting actress".
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The production was directed by Mike Nichols with Sigourney Weaver taking on the role of Darlene, a scatterbrained photojournalist who gets involved with two roommates.
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Sigourney Weaver reprised the role of Ellen Ripley seven years later in the sequel to Alien, similarly titled Aliens directed by James Cameron.
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In 1988, Sigourney Weaver starred as primatologist Dian Fossey in the biographical drama Gorillas in the Mist.
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At the Golden Globes that year, Sigourney Weaver was one of three actresses to win in Best Actress, alongside Jodie Foster and Shirley MacLaine, in a three-way tie.
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Sigourney Weaver was the first of four actresses to have won two Golden Globes in the same year.
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Sigourney Weaver returned to the big screen with Alien 3 and Ridley Scott's 1492: Conquest of Paradise in which she played the role of Queen Isabella.
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Sigourney Weaver played the role of agoraphobic criminal psychologist Helen Hudson in the film Copycat.
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Sigourney Weaver concentrated on smaller and supporting roles such as Jeffrey with Nathan Lane and Patrick Stewart.
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Sigourney Weaver received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame that same year.
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In 2001, Sigourney Weaver appeared in the comedy Heartbreakers playing the lead role of a con-artist alongside Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ray Liotta, Gene Hackman and Anne Bancroft.
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Sigourney Weaver was included on Channel 4's "100 Greatest Movie Stars" in 2003.
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Sigourney Weaver appeared in several films throughout the decade including Holes, the M Night Shyamalan horror film The Village, Vantage Point, and Baby Mama.
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In 2007, Sigourney Weaver returned to Rwanda for the BBC special Gorillas Revisited, in which Sigourney Weaver reunites with the Rwandan apes from the film Gorillas in the Mist, some 20 years later.
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Sigourney Weaver made a rare guest appearance on television playing herself in season 2 episode of the television series Eli Stone in the fall of 2008.
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In 2009, Sigourney Weaver starred as Mary Griffith in her first television film Prayers for Bobby, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award.
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Sigourney Weaver has hosted two episodes of the long-running NBC sketch show Saturday Night Live: once on the 12th-season premiere in 1986, and again, on a season 35 episode in January 2010.
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Sigourney Weaver was honored at the 2010 Scream Awards earning The Heroine Award which honored her work in science fiction, horror and fantasy films.
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In December 2013, Sigourney Weaver was a guest narrator at Disney's Candlelight Processional at Walt Disney World.
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In 2013, Sigourney Weaver returned to Broadway in the Christopher Durang play Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike alongside David Hyde Pierce, Kristine Nielsen, and Billy Magnussen at the John Golden Theatre.
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In 2014, Sigourney Weaver reprised the role of Ripley for the first time in 17 years by voicing the character in the video game Alien: Isolation.
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Sigourney Weaver's character has a voice cameo in the main story, and has a central role in the two DLCs set during the events of Alien, with most of the original cast voicing their respective characters.
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Sigourney Weaver appeared in the film Exodus: Gods and Kings playing Tuya, directed by Ridley Scott, alongside Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton and Ben Kingsley.
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On February 25,2015, Sigourney Weaver confirmed that she would reprise her role as Ellen Ripley in the new Alien film.
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In 2015 and 2017, Sigourney Weaver played an American tourist in two episodes of the British television series Doc Martin.
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In 2016, Sigourney Weaver voiced herself in a cameo in the Pixar film Finding Dory.
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Sigourney Weaver played Alexandra, the leader of the Hand, in Netflix and Marvel's miniseries The Defenders, released in 2017.
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On June 7,2019, Sigourney Weaver confirmed that she would reprise her role as Dana Barrett in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which was released on November 19,2021.
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Principal photography for Avatar: The Way of Water and Avatar: Fire and Ash started simultaneously on September 25,2017; Sigourney Weaver portrayed Kiri, Jake and Neytiri's daughter, and reprised her role as Dr Grace Augustine.
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In 2023, Sigourney Weaver starred in and executive-produced the Australian miniseries The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart.
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On May 7,2024, Weaver returned to the stage reprising her role as Masha in the one night benefit performance of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike alongside David Hyde Pierce, Kristine Nielsen, and Linda Lavin at the Mitzi E Newhouse Theater in Lincoln Center.
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Sigourney Weaver made her West End debut as Prospero in the revival of the William Shakespeare play The Tempest directed by Jamie Lloyd at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 2025.
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Sigourney Weaver was honored by the Explorers Club for her work and is considered to be an environmentalist.
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In October 2006, Sigourney Weaver gave a news conference at the start of a United Nations General Assembly policy deliberation where she outlined the threat to ocean habitats posed by deep-sea trawling, an industrial method for catching fish.
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Sigourney Weaver has been married to stage director Jim Simpson since October 1,1984.
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Sigourney Weaver is close friends with fellow actresses Jamie Lee Curtis and Selina Cadell.
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Sigourney Weaver's most acclaimed films, according to the review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes and a number of media rankings, include:.
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Sigourney Weaver has received three Academy Award nominations, three BAFTA nominations, seven Golden Globe Award nominations, one Grammy Award nomination, four Primetime Emmy Award nominations, three SAG nominations and a Tony Award nomination.