BIOGRAPHY
At
six feet tall, Sigourney Weaver is far from removed from traditional images of
feminine perfection, epitomized by past stars like Monroe and Bardot. Even so
her striking looks have been celebrated by photographers of the calibre of
Helmut Newton, and paraded in fashion spreads for magazines such as Vogue
and Harper’s Bazaar. She has, some would say, a host of natural
assets: an intelligent, sculptured face, accentuated cheekbones, a wide forehead
and a long neck. Her hair is brown and naturally curly, her eyes piercing and
dark. A critic once remarked that Sigourney possessed "the looks of an
untouchable princess”.
On
the threshold of middle age Sigourney’s looks and figure remain wonderfully
lean and trim, thanks to a strict regime of daily exercise. The pursuit of
fitness is essential for her own well-being and peace of mind. “When I can’t
go to the gym I feel awful.” She has always been the sporting type. Athletics,
horse-riding, karate and snorkelling, which she mastered during a long vacation
in the Bahamas shortly after completing her role in Alien,
are just a few of the demanding activities in which she indulges. The actress
also enjoys dancing (as a child she was made to attend ballroom dancing
lessons), and for an evening’s entertainment prefers a trip to the theatre
than a seat in the stalls of a movie house. Reading is another pleasure and she
numbers Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim
among her favourite novels. She also enjoys poetry, especially that of Robert
Frost and Shakespeare.
Sigourney
Weaver is one of the most popular and acclaimed actress in the world cinema, a
genuine star in a firmament littered with pretenders. She has overcome what many
people in the industry considered grave handicaps: her extreme height, prejudice
towards her beauty and sex, and absurd preconceptions about her background and
class. Yet all the while she has remained true to herself, close to her roots.
She is today as she has ever been: delightfully forthcoming, surprisingly
approachable and diverting (in complete contrast to her intense and serious
screen image), and remarkably uncorrupted. Fame has not changed Sigourney
Weaver. She remains an unlikely star in a business where inflated egos and
double-dealing are the norm.
Sigourney
Weaver is the daughter of Sylvester Weaver - president of the NBC in the fifties
- and Elizabeth Ingles, a British actress. After the war, which saw Sylvester
Weaver as a lieutenant in the Navy, they started a family with the birth of a
son, Trajan, named after Sylvester´s favourite Roman Emperor. So great was
Sylvester´s penchant for Roman history that he even considered calling
Sigourney "Flavia". The arrival of Trajan marked the end of Elizabeth´s
acting career.
Susan Alexandra Weaver (later Sigourney) first drew breath on 8 October
1949. She was born in New York, the city where she was to spend most of her
childhood and many of her later years. Susan led a life what can only be
described as the life of a little princess. She was a spoilt, pampered, and
sheltered child who lived in a virtual bubble of guiltless bliss and unblemished
contentment. The real world hardly ever got a look in. Nannies and maids tended
to her every whim and TV studios were her playgrounds. In the first 10 years of
Susan´s life, the Weavers resided in thirty different households. Today
Sigourney remembers the various appartments in which she lived by the names of
the elevator men, who were always her best friends.
She was also maturing at a rapid speed. By the time Susan reached her
teens she was a tall, intelligent and cultured young woman. The last two
qualities helped her excel at some of New York´s most celebrated schools. Susan
first attented the Brearly Girls Academy, but her mother moved her to another
prominent establishment, Chapin, because she preferred the uniforms there.
Sigourney´s extreme height was initially an almighty hindrance at school. By
the age of thirteen she was a lanky 5 feet 10 inches and a rather clumsy ugly
duckling of a teenager. At Chapin, Sigourney became the centre of attention for
all the wrong reasons and was constantly laughed at and made fun of by the other
children. What often happens in such cases is that the tormented child
deliberately accentuates her physical defects and accepts the role of class
clown. This was certainly true in the case of Susan Weaver.
When Sigourney was thirteen, her parents left New York and moved to San
Fransisco. For her San Fransisco was something of a culture shock. In New York
the teenager had been well protected from the harsh realities of everyday
existence. This shielded upbringing had produced a shy and anxious girl who
found herself unable to mingle with people of her own age. She felt particularly
lost amidst the fast-living inhabitants of an early sixties California. The
class system which was seen as so important in New York just didn´t exist on
the West Coast: here you were accepted on your own merits as a human being and
judged on recent achievements, not past glories. Your background, your parents´
wealth and social standing accounted for very little.Susan´s stay in California
was thankfully short-lived. "I wanted to go away to school. I had this
romantic idea of what boarding-school would be like. Then I went away to Ethel
Walker´s there and I just cried for the first year." Ethel Walker was a
private school of much propriety in Sumsbury, Connecticut, and was populated by
largely by girls who came from priviledged backgrounds.
The general consensus was that the school´s new basketball star had
arrived. That first year at Ethel Walker was an arduous one. By the end of term
Susan´s fellow school-mates had voted her `Freshman Fink´: ´the nerdiest girl
in my class´. Hardly a boost to her flimsy confidence. Despite this initial
setback, she managed to win a reputation for herself among the teachers as a
top-class student, hard working and well mannered.
The very next day Susan rounded up her best friends and announced that
henceforth she was to be referred to as Sigourney. When her parents found out
about the name change they were fairly upset and shocked; it had all happened so
quickly and without warning. In the end they were most reasonable and respected
their daughter´s wishes, although Sylvester stressed the fact that in his
opinion Sigourney was more of a man´s name, and for a while both he and
Elizabeth insisted on calling their daughter "S", just in case she
changed her name again.
Sigourney´s teachers were at a loss as to how to make their student
commit herself to one single, specific subject. In the end they pushed Sigourney
towards a more concentrated study of English literature in the hope that her
unique gift for bringing stories and fictional characters to life could be
channelled into a teaching career. This was a wise move and, most importantly of
all, Sigourney also appeared to like the idea.
Despite the fact that Stanford didn’t possess a very good drama
department in the late sixties, Sigourney still managed to attend a few acting
classes and join a local theatre group. In her second year the acting bug began
to bite more intensely. Sigourney took part in two Shakespeare plays. She
portrayed Ariel in The Tempest and
Goneril in a ‘rather irreverent’ production of
King Lear, which was presented in the form of a Japanese Noh play. Even this
early on Sigourney was enjoying the thrill of experimenting with theatre styles
and the structure and staging of plays, be they modern or classic.
Despite the fact that she had never seriously studied acting at school
nor been a drama major, the theatre had always held a special place in her heart
and in recent years this passion had begun to consume her. She decided to leave
Stanford and apply for a place at the Yale School of Drama. Her parents were
only moderately pleased when they heard the news. Both had great misgivings
about seeing their daughter enter the acting profession, but were aware of
Yale’s glittering reputation as a respected seat of learning. Veterans of the
business, the Weavers never directly encouraged Sigourney to take to the stage.
Both were familiar with the pain of failure and the distress caused by having
one’s talents and ideas constantly on trial and open to critisism. The
heartbreak of a rejection is a feeling an actor never quite recovers from and
the Weavers were worried that their daughter was too shy and fragile even to
survive the hostile world of show business, let alone to rise above it and
succeed.
Sigourney prepared herself
for the three year stay at Yale. She was excited by the prospect of attending
what may have been the country’s leading drama institution, and eager to
tackle the variety of challenging roles she would be called upon to play. Her
dreams were to be dashed in the cruellest way. Yale was not to be the great
learning experience she had hoped for, but a punishing lesson in rejection and
perseverance. Sigourney’s
wonderful craziness manifested itself in some pretty off-the-wall drama work at
Yale, similar in content to the kind of stuff she had been doing at Stanford.
But this didn’t go down very well with her new teachers and as a result
Sigourney was harshly criticized. “It took me a long time to realize that I
wasn’t wrong, they were.”
At Yale, in a world of their own, the teachers simply dictated which
student was to play which part. Meryl Streep, who was a year behind Sigourney,
walked away with all the plum female roles. To say Sigourney was bitter is would
be an understatement. In Sigourney’s case, during the whole of her three years
at Yale the teachers never once selected her for a leading part. Whereas Meryl
Streep was treated almost reverently by the Yale teaching staff, Sigourney was
callously dealt with. Her tutors actively discouraged her from continuing as an
actress. In their opinion she had no talent whatsoever and shouldn’t even be
contemplating a theatrical career.
Significantly the writer who was most impressed by Sigourney Weaver was
Christopher Durang. “She was the immediate star of her class,” he told Interview
Magazine in July 1988. “Beautiful, sculptured face, slender body - and she
seemed to be about seven feet tall. She looked like a mythological godess.”
The first time Durang laid eyes on her she was wearing a costume that was
comparable to her old Stanford elf garb. The sight of this tall and striking
WASP wearing green pyjama pants with small dangling pompons one the side of her
legs, could have put Durang off her for life. The first time they actually spoke
to one another turned out to be a rather unfortunate and dark occasion.
Sigourney asked him, quite innocently, whether he had any brothers and sisters.
Unbeknown to her, Durang’s mother had been Rh-negative (a very rare and tragic
blood disorder which causes a woman to give birth to still-born children).
Durang politely answered the question. “Yes I have three, but they’re all
dead.” There was complete silence, Sigourney stared at him in utter disbelief.
Then she looked deeper into his eyes, realized that he was actually telling the
truth, and roared with laughter. Lesser mortals, devoid of Durang’s warped
sense of the bizarre, might have reacted violently, but he saw the joke and from
this surprising first encounter grew a lasting friendship.
In contrast to British
actors who all swarm to London to begin their careers in the myriad of fringe
theatres that litter the capital, American thespians have the option of two
vastly different places - Los Angeles, where the sun and the movie industry are;
or New York, where the more theatre-conscious actors tend to prosper. For
Sigourney the choice had been a simple one; after all, she was first and
foremost a stage actress, although she was later to attain fame in the cinema. A
return to New York was also a nostalgic trip back to the memories of her
childhood. Unfortunately, one of the more painful aspects of her youth had
reappeared to haunt her in the present. Once again Sigourney’s great height
was causing her grievous personal disappointment. On one occasion a producer was
unwilling to use her because she was taller than the leading man. “Look,”
she said. “Why don’t I paint a pair of shoes on my feet and I’ll play the
role barefoot.” The producer thought deeply about the idea. “I don’t think
that would work, Sigourney,” he finally answered. She was amazed by his
response, she hadn’t meant her suggestion to be taken seriously. It was a
joke. “And the idiot had taken me seriously.”
The first year out of Yale was extremely tough. The big agents complained
about her height and kept trying to typecast her as a high society girlfriend,
the kind of superficial female who nods politely at cocktail functions, pours
the drinks, and stands in a state of servility behind her centre-stage
boyfriend, the kind of sickening outdated character that Sigourney would rather
lose a major part of her anatomy than play.
After years of acting in arty and experimental off-Broadway plays,
Sigourney suddenly found herself in the conservative world of commercial
television. The transition from the stage to TV wasn’t easy, but she soon
began to receive offers of work, primarly for supporting or brief guest spot
roles. In common with the majority of American actors Sigourney ended up working
in one or other of the never-ending legion of daily soap operas that plague US
television. She appeared in the fondly forgotten Somerset, alongside the young Ted Danson, playing a woman whose
ambition was to become America’s first female president.
1977 was the year of Sigourney Weaver’s feature film début. In
complete contrast to the multitude of actors who have gone on to claim stardom
but whose early movies were turkeys or forgotten relics, Sigourney made her début
in an acknowledged masterpiece of modern cinema, Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. Her audition was the archetypal actor’s nightmare.
Sigourney was nervous enough (she was a great admirer of the comedian’s work),
but when her performance was greeted by Allen’s customary silence, panic took
over. In a state of dismay, she struggled to find her way out and stumbled into
a broom cupboard by mistake. She eventually found the exit door and left in a
sullen and highly embarrassed state. But she got the part, much to her surprise,
although she later had to forsake it due to prior stage commitments. Luckily,
Allen was still keen to use her, so he arranged for Sigourney to appear in a
walk-on role close to the end of the film. She played Alvy’s date outside a
theatre. So small was her contribution that Sigourney later joked, “Unless you
know my raincoat you’ll miss me.”
As 1977 turned into 1978 Sigourney Weaver, now approaching thirty, has
still to find that exclusive first big break, that initial springboard which
every actor needs in order to launch his or her career. Her career was in the
dumps. She had just opened in the off-Broadway play, The Conquering Event, and was gallantly trying to be objective about
the opening night’s foul reviews, when she received a phonecall from Mary
Goldberg, an independent agent who was a keen admirer of her work. Goldberg
arranged for Sigourney to meet Walter Hill, David Giler and Gordon Carroll, a
group of creative producers who had come to New York looking for someone to play
Ripley, the female protagonist in a new and ambitious science fiction film
called Alien. Sigourney had been
highly recommended to them and was the first batch they wanted to see. The role
of Ripley was a arduous one. She was a tough, unglamorous and uncompromising
character and the person to portray her needed to be equally tough and
independent. Also, as the sole survivor of a space expedition, Sigourney, if
chosen for the part, would occupy more screen minutes than her experienced
co-stars. Amazingly, she seemed to display blatant indifference to what was a
golden opportunity, the chance of a lead role in a major Hollywood movie, a once
in a lifetime offer that other actors might have killed for. But there were more
weighty matters occupying Sigourney’s mind, namely her loyalty and commitment
to The Hunger Project, and her concerns about ending the plight of the world’s
starving millions. Nevertheless, the interview went ahead and was a success. The
men asked if she would read the script overnight and return for further
discussions the following morning. In near-disregard for the obvious advantages
of being involved in Alien, Sigourney
harboured grave reservations about the project. “I didn’t want to play this
awful part in this awful movie,” she recalled to You magazine in November 1989. She had not suffered the indignities
of Yale just to star in a low-grade horror flick. “I mean, to do science
fiction was below even me. I didn’t know Alien
was this masterpiece. I thought it was this big blob of yellow jelly running
around.”
The actress was most critical of the screenplay after the initial
read-through. she found the story very bleak and unappealing, and felt that the
characters failed to relate to one another and were too impersonal and
bloodless. When Sigourney returned the following day she made her opinions known
in blunt fashion to the producers, much to the open consternation of a casting
agent who was heard to mutter, “Stupid woman! Don’t you realize this is your
big break?” But Sigourney knew that if Hill and the other producers were at
all serious about hiring her then they would accept her criticisms and encourage
her views on the character of Ripley and the script. The film’s director
Ridley Scott was present at that second meeting. After talking with him at some
length and studying the designs for the film and for the eponymous monsters,
Sigourney began to realize that Alien
was going to be a very innovative picture. Suddenly, the project was starting to
engage her interest.
Originally, all seven crew members of the spaceship Nostromo were male. It was Alan Ladd jr. who ordered that the roles
of Ripley and Lambert be played by women. This was a wise move on his part and
gave Alien a unique quality that its rivals lacked: a woman had become the hero
in a genre where men usually reigned supreme. The only obvious concession to
Ripley’s sexuality comes near to the end of the picture when she strips down
to a T-shirt and a pair of tight briefs. Ridley Scott decided to include this
sequence in order to feminize Ripley slightly and to stress her vulnerability,
after some observers had claimed that she was too hard and unsympathetic. Even
partially naked, Sigourney provoked an inordinate amount of fan mail, some of
which was very strange indeed. She also courted some bizarre attention; men
began to follow her around. Thankfully, by the early eighties such mad worship
had eased off, but Sigourney was left mentally scarred. “It made me pull right
back from the movies.”
Sigourney’s search for a valid and strong female character to play
ended when the British director Peter Yates (Bullit,
The Deep) offered her the part of TV
reporter Tony Sokolow in his romantic thriller The Janitor (US title: Eyewitness).
This was the kind of role she had been waiting over a year to play. Daryll
(played by that consummate American actor William Hurt), works the late shift as
a janitor in a Manhatten office building. He is besotted by top TV journalist
Tony Sokolow (Sigourney Weaver), whom he avidly watches every night. On his
rounds one evening, Daryll stumbles upon the murdered body of a Vietnamese
diamond merchant. This grisly discovery brings him into contact with the woman
of his dreams, for it is Tony who is sent to cover the story for television.
Daryll seizes his chance to know more about her and piques her professional
interest by pretending to know more about the murder than he actually does. This
reckless action soon puts both their lives in danger. Daryll is disarmingly
direct in telling Tony the extent of his love and soon the couple are cavorting
between crumpled sheets, after an incident in which Daryll rescues Tony from a
gang of kidnappers (a sequence which called for Sigourney to roll out of a
moving car and jump to a getaway motorbike). She performed this stunt herself
‘because it told you a lot about the woman’. It tells us a lot about
Sigourney Weaver, too.
The lack of any great romantic foreplay prior to the love scene suggests
that Tony is sleeping with Daryll just to get the story. However, her feelings
for the man grow rapidly thereafter. While reading the script Sigourney had
doubts about her character’s true feelings for Daryll. Only after watching the
film did she feel that their romance was genuine. Her love for him blossoms
gradually; “it’s as she begins to listen to Daryll as a woman and not as a
reporter”. The Janitor remains an
underrated film, an overlooked curiosity. Between the close filming on The
Janitor and its eventual release Sigourney Weaver’s life was a veritable
whirligig of activity. There was an admirable return to the stage in yet another
Durang play, Beyond Therapy, perhaps his best-known work due to the fact that it
was made, unsuccessfully, into a film in 1987 starring Jeff Goldblum and Glenda
Jackson. The off-Broadway version
was decidedly better and more respectfully received. The play, which seeked to
ridicule the psychiatrist and his curious occupation, was presented at the
Phoenix Theatre in January 1981. Sigourney played a woman who has a steamy
affair with her bisexual analist.
Sigourney’s relationship with Durang, born out of the turmoil of Yale,
is a true testimony to friendship and talent. Theirs is a strange, yet fruitful
partnership; one might even call them the ‘odd couple’. But their writing
collaborations are proof of how well matched they are. They share the same sense
of the bizarre and love of black, offbeat comedy; both are endowed with an
accentric wit and take a sideway view of the world they inhabit. Their wildest
caper occurred in the year of Sigourney’s rise to tabloid fame, thanks to her
role in Ghostbusters. Together they
wrote and performed a fine parody of those awful, self-congratulatory celebrity
interviews that appear in the glossy magazines. Entitled The
Naked Lunch, the mock-interview took place at the palatial Russian
Tea-Rooms. Sigourney and Durang smeared one another with caviare and printed the
result, complete with photographs, in an edition of the Esquire.
Part of the interview ran as follows:
C.D.: Tell me, how did you get the leading role in Alien?
S.W.: I slept with the director.
C.D.: And Eyewitness?
S.W.: I slept with the director and the writer and the crew.
C.D.: And The Year of Living
Dangerously?
S.W.: I slept with the Australian consulate.
In the early years the two of them would spend long days together making
each other laugh, cracking jokes, and writing. But as Sigourney grew in stature
as a film actress the two old partners had difficulty finding the time for
writing sessions. No longer were there spontaneous occasions; now they had to be
carefully scheduled in order to fit in with their respective work commitments.
Things just weren’t the same.
The most significant new
arrival in Sigourney’s life in 1981 was a man by the name of James McClure, an
actor/playwright whom she had first met during the production of New
Jerusalem some years before. McClure was currently in the process of getting
his play Lone Star made into a movie. He had been working for eighteen months
on a project. Sigourney found the play interesting and felt strangely drawn to
the central female character of Elizabeth. Weaver also founded herself
captivated by McClure. He was after all a handsome, multi-talented man, and
single, too, which helped. In turn he was struck by the actress’s beauty and
intelligence. It was largely inevitable that the two would get together: they
shared similar attributes and common interests, and the mutual love of the
theatre led to many happy hours together. A serious love affair soon flourished.
Sigourney’s past romantic liaisons had gone undocumented, except for her
relationship with Aaron Latham, a journalist to whom she was apparantly engaged
to in her late teens. (Despite Sigourney’s demure and refined façade she can
sometimes be capable of the most colossal tantrums. One morning, at Latham’s
New York apartment, the lovers began to argue in bed. Suddenly, Sigourney leaped
out from under the covers and ran to the kitchen. She emerged seconds later
carrying a carton of eggs which she then proceeded to throw at Latham. The first
struck the wall, the second a nearby table lamp, but the third was a direct
hit.)
Meanwhile McClure’s efforts to get Lone
Star on film seemed closer to fruition when director Robert Altman (M*A*S*H,
McCabe and Mrs Miller) became involved in the project and 20th Century Fox
agreed to put up the budget. Altman wanted Sigourney in the lead, opposite
Powers Boothe, who had been pencilled in as her co-star. For the lovers it all
seemed like a dream come true. But fate was later to deal them a cruel hand.
Just three weeks before shooting was due to begin, 20th Century Fox pulled out
and the project withered, leaving Sigourney devastated and heartbroken. The
collapse of Lone Star had placed a
massive stain on the Weaver/McClure partnership and was a dominant factor in the
couple’s eventual seperation. “It was a horrendous time which left a lot of
wreckage, including our relationship.” But Sigourney managed to survive this
particular professional and personal trauma intact, and emerged at the other end
leaner and stronger than ever before. Perhaps too strong. Her father was worried
that his daughter was becoming obsessive about her career. The fact that his
daughter had not as yet found a stable partner and settled down was a matter of
grave concern.
The Year of Living
Dangerously was
the first Australian film to be fully financed by a major American company, MGM.
Peter Weir´s background impressed Sigourney Weaver; she admired the mystical
and allegorical elements he instilled into his work. When the director offered
Sigourney the part of Jill Byrant she accepted almost immediately, despite the
fact that the character was ill-defined and not of central importance to the
narrative. So great was her desire to work with Weir that she overlooked her
hatred of peripheral roles and plunged in regardless. The point of history that
Weir had set his tale fascinated the actress and as she once conceded, "I´d
rather have a small part in a movie I love than a bigger part in one I don´t
care about."
Many of those involved in the making of The Year of Living Dangerously agreed that it had all the right
ingredients to be a massive worldwide hit: an acclaimed and popular director;
two rising young stars; a tension-filled story with romantic overtones and
exotic locations. In February 1983, MGM hosted a special screening of the movie
which was followed by a successful gala reception with a star-studded guest list
which included the likes of Charlton Heston and James Coburn. But all the eyes
were on Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver when they arrived together, calm and
composed under a storm of flopping flash-bulbs. Later in the evening the two
stars happily submitted to the horde of photographers who had gathered for the
occasion and, at one amusing moment, posed with huge Havana cigars in their
mouths.
Forgetting the agonies of location filming and her rather subdued role, The Year of Living Dangerously is one of Sigourney´s favourite
movies and one which brought her some of the best critiques of her career. In
the space of just five years Sylvester and Elizabeth Weaver had seen their
daughter evolve from an accomplished, but overlooked, stage actress into a
cinema star of rare quality. She was a superstar in the making. Sigourney´s
respect for her father is bottomless and to some extent she carries and shares
the pain of his mistreatment at the hands of NBC. "It just galls me.
Everyone bends over backwards to acknowledge my father," she told Première
magazine in October 1988. "They´d rather acknowledge him than give him a
job." And so it was with a great deal of pride, tinged with a modicum of
resentment towards the business which had so cruelly spurned his services, that
Sigourney attended the 1983 Emmy Awards. For the Weaver family this was to be a
special night, Sylvester was to be honoured with an award for his great years of
service with NBC. It was much appreciated, but some twenty-five years too late.
His acceptance speech was a mocking one. He accused the industry of being adrift
in a sea of mediocrity. His views found many favourable ears and he left the
podium to deafening applause. As the television camera panned the audience it
stopped briefly upon the face of an emotional Sigourney. "Thank you,"
the mouthed.
In 1982 Sigourney returned to the cinema and began to work on what at the
time seemed a promising and worthwhile venture, Deal of the Century. The film was a black comedy which sought to
take a harsh and satirical look at one of the most repellent of modern
industries, the multi-billion dollar world of the arms dealer. But despite its
admirable intentions the movie was a dud in every department. The critical and
commercial failure of Deal of the Century
proved especially puzzling when one considers the high-calibre film making
personnel involved - director William Friedkin (The French Connection, The
Exorcist), screenwriter Paul Brickman (director and author of Risky
Business, the film that launched the career of Tom Cruise),a nd producer Bud
Yorkin. To Sigourney her participation in Deal
of the Century represents an important and progressive step in her career,
because at last she was given the opportunity to play film comedy. And comedy,
she and many of her working colleagues feel, is her greatest strength.
"I want jokes," declared Sigourney to Films and Filming in November 1981. "Also I´d like to sing and
dance in movies." There is so much potential and talent in Sigourney that
has, as yet, been untapped by Hollywood.
Conceived by Dan Aykroyd, Ghostbusters
arose from the comedian´s interests in the supernatural, which dates back to
his childhood. Aykroyd´s family has a history of close encounters with the
paranormal; an old farmhouse in Canada, where he grew up, was the scene of many
family seances and unexplained psychic disturbances. Czech-born Ivan Reitman was
approached to direct the film and instantly recognized its potential.
The film’s incredibly intricate and elaborate effects made quite an
impression on Sigourney. The actress has always enjoyed the world of special
effects and feels safe in the capable hands of filmdom’s technical wizards.
Sigourney herself was involved in quite a few elaborate live-action effects
scenes. In one gripping sequence she is attacked by three demonic hands that
sprout from a chair. She proved to be an enthusiastic victim. At first the
puppeteers who operated the arms were afraid of hurting the star and were too
tame in their efforts to grab hold of her. In the end Sigourney had to forcibly
encourage them to get tough and slap her around much harder.
What was profoundly more difficult was reacting to something, a ghost for
example, that was to be added on to the film at a later stage by the special
effects experts. In one scene Dana opens a fridge only to find an apocalyptic
vision before her. On the day this sequence was shot Reitman had to scramble
into the fridge, along with a camera, and when Sigourney opened the door he
shouted at her to act scared. One wonders how she was able to keep a straight
face.
Ghostbusters
opened on 8 June 1984, following a devastatingly successful four-month
advertising campaign. In February a friendly looking white ghost peering through
a red circle with a diagonal line through it appeared for the first time on one
of those huge billboards that grace Sunset Boulevard. The title of the film was
not mentioned; the copy read only: ‘Coming to save the world this summer’.
This logo soon began to appear all over America: in subways, on prime-time
television, in newspapers, and proved to be both eye-catching and memorable. It
needed to be, for Ghostbusters was
opening up against big competition in the form of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Star Trek III and Gremlins.
Happily for all concerned the film surpassed even Columbia’s high
expectations. By the end of 1984 Ghostbusters
had entered the all-time box-office top ten. The most hyped movie of the
mid-eighties, the film led to a huge boom in related products such as toys,
games, clothes, and even a cartoon show. America had gone Ghostbusters crazy and the world soon happily followed suit.
Sigourney’s participation in the smash hit Ghostbusters helped revitalize her career; not since Alien
had the actress amassed so much hype and publicity. Once again her face was
staring out from periodicals on paper stands across the nation. This time she
was not Ripley, staring blankly at the camera, her face clean of make-up, her
body wrapped in a dirty, workmanlike boiler suit, and with a malevolent
extraterrestrial breathing down her neck. This time she was…the glamorous Dana
Barrett sporting an erotic red dress and striking a seductive pose, her face
heavily made up. She looked like a technicolour Helmut Hewton
fantasy. Cinefantastique had
only praise for her: “The epitome of class and delectability, Weaver smoulders
across the screen in her best role since Alien.”
And fashion-bible Harper’s Bazaar
voted her one of America’s ten most beautiful women. But her reaction to the
label of sex symbol following her Ghostbusters
role was a mixed one. “I’m not really in touch with being a…er sex godess,”
she admitted to the Sunday Express in
December 1984. “I’ll have to work on that.”
Midway through the triumphant run of Hurlyburly,
Sigourney announced that she would be leaving the production in October. She had
fallen in love with a man six years her junior, Jim Simpson, a theatre director,
born and raised in Hawaii, and they planned to marry in the fall. The roots of
their relationship go back to the early eighties when the two of them used to
attend the summer theatre festivals at Williamstown, Massachusetts regularly.
Sigourney was acquainted with the talented and upwardly mobile Jim Simpson, but
their paths scarcely crossed. On the odd occasion they bumped into each other
and indulged in innocent conversation, but nothing more. This went on until the
summer of 1983, when Sigourney appeared in Harold Pinter’s Old
Times. At last they found themselves involved in the same production. He was
in charge of the non-Equity players. Working with him on a day-to-day basis
Sigourney found herself growing quite fond of the young man. One night at a
party Weaver went over to Jim and asked him for the next dance, a request that
was refused. “Luckily, we had another chance,” said Sigourney. Destiny is
difficult to shake off or escape. It does seem that they were fated to meet and
be together: their lives had been running parallel courses, and there are some
striking similarities in their backgrounds.
For example, both had grown up in a show business environment, although
the circumstances were diferent.
Jim Simpson had been a child actor appearing in a succession of
television shows and movies. He later regularly worked on one of the most
popular TV cop shows of all time, Hawaii
Five-O. While many of us would have been gladly content with such a life
style, Jim hungered for other challenges. Most importantly of all he wanted to
achieve a higher standard of education. So he swapped the idyllic Hawaiian world
of palm trees and soft, warm breezes for Boston, where he attended the city’s
university for four years. Like Sigourney he was a top student and went on to
enrol at the Yale School of Drama. Jim’s stay at the academy was certainly
less traumatic than his soul-mate’s. At an important crossroad in his life
Simpson decided to abandon acting and instead channel his considerable talents
into directing. His first real professional theatrical duties were at
Williamstown in the early eighties.
Amidst all the noise and excitement of the party Sigourney finally
managed to corner him alone. Together they sat and talked for much of the night.
Both were silently but consciously captivated by one another: she by his talent
and wealth of knowledge about the theatre; and he by her extraordinary beauty,
wit and intelligence. By the end of the party Sigourney, taking the lead once
again, invited him around for a quiet dinner for two the following evening. From
those first two tentative nights there developed a serious and passionate
romance. Both were surprised to discover just how close they felt and how much
they had in common. Soon they were seen everywhere together, always engrossed in
conversation, always enjoying one another’s company. When Sigourney took Jim
home to meet her parents she sneakily introduced him as a surfer, mindful of the
fact that her father would approve more of a surfer dating his daughter than
some theatre type. The couple enjoyed twelve long, happy months of courtship,
which included camping (one of Sigourney’s favourite pursuits), in Simpson’s
native Hawaii. The seriousness of the affair was apparent when the normally
hyper-secretive Sigourney, cryptic and elusive about personal matters, began to
open the floodgates of her heart to journalists. There was a time when the
actress would either blankly refuse to discuss her love life in interview
situations or sit back and gamely spoof it. (Sigourney had once told a gullible
journalist that she and old love James McClure had been married for fifteen
years and had five illegitimate children) Although Sigourney remained adamant
that marriage was out of the question, in fact it was just a year away.
When Sigourney Weaver married Jim Simpson in mid-October 1984 the wildly
unorthodox and irregular ceremony beautifully complemented the freakish and
eccentric nature of the couple. Jim was another free spirit. “I mean, we’re
talking about someone who didn’t wear shoes until he was ten.” The ceremony
was held on the hallowed turf of the father’s Long Island yacht club, a
traditional setting for what was the most untraditional wedding of the year. The
musical accompaniment to the service was provided by bongo drums and bagpipes
and two ministers, one male, the other female, were asked to perform the
ceremony jointly. The most bizarre touch of all was that everyone was given a
wash-off tattoo to wear. This wasn’t compulsory but most of the guests,
including Bill Murray, entered into the spirit of the proceedings. “It was
great fun,” recalled the comedian. “But then I’ve never seen Sigourney
give a bad party.” Sigourney’s mother was one of those who were a little
bemused by the strange goings-on. “Our wedding was sort of grazy,” Sigourney
told Première magazine in 1988. “I
know my mother is a little upset that she didn’t get more of a hand in the
wedding. But it was utterly our wedding and, in that sense, a celebration.”
Nevertheless, the Weavers were overjoyed at their daughter’s obvious
happiness. They were glad, and a little relieved, that she had finally settled
down into marriage: at thirty-five it was about time.
Marriage, far from settling Sigourney Weaver, sparked off the most
productive phase of her career to date. During the course of 1985 the actress
made three films in quick succession. Only the blockbusting Aliens
turned out to be of any merit: the other two films were the worst of her career
- Half Moon Street, a turgid thriller;
and A Woman or Two, a French comedy
that simply wasn’t funny.
Swaim’s major problem was the casting of the female protagonist. Many of the actresses who read for the part were put off by the sleazy material and the nudity involved. Sigourney, however, fell under the spell of Lauren Slaughter. Quite simply it was the best part Sigourney had ever read and she fought hard to win the role. During filming Swaim was under considerable pressure to tone down the sexual aspect of the story. When Sigourney read the revised screenplay she was angry and disappointed at how tame the whole thing had become. On location the actress was a lone voice pleading with Swaim not to make Half Moon Street as a “safe” picture. In her opinion the director had lost creative control of the production and failed to fight for the original concept. “He changed my character into this humourless looker with brains that had nothing to do with my idea of the character nor Paul Theroux’s novel,” Sigourney confessed to Time Out magazine in January 1989.
Artistically the only consolation lay in the experience of working with
Michael Caine, whose approach to acting was completely different from her own.
They have remained good friends ever since. But their relationship had
unfortunate beginnings: due to poor planning the first scene they shot together
was their big love scene. The two actors had barely met, but what could have
been a difficult and embarrassing day of filming was made bearable by Caine’s
considerable charm and good humour.
Yet one is left to ponder on the reason why Sigourney allowed herself to
be talked into doing such pointless and cheaply voyeuristic scenes as those in Half
Moon Street. She appears topless in a bath, on an exercise bike and in
stockings and suspenders with her
bare buttocks to the camera. Sigourney’s long-awaited “bare all” scenes
are tacky in the extreme, exploitative, and very unflattering. If a Hollywood
actress is going to make the difficult decision to appear naked then she might
as well do so in some style. Swaim is to blame here: he directs the random sex
scenes in a very emotionless fashion. Sigourney was attacked in some quarters
for appearing nude in such a futile and shabby way. Half
Moon Street opened in America on 26 September 1986 in a re-edited and
re-scored form due to a string of unenthusiastic preview screenings. The movie,
a box-office disaster, was slain by the critics. Variety described it as “a half-baked excuse for a film”. In
spite of the script’s implausibilities and ineptness Sigourney gives a
commendable performance. Unfortunately, Swaim’s movie isn’t on a par with
Sigourney’s acting. This is a shame because Lauren Slaughter is one of the
most fascinating and complex roles Sigourney has played. From such original and
bizarre material Swaim had managed to make a feeble and pedestrian motion
picture. Rool on Aliens.
Cameron immediately set to work on a screenplay, carefully plotting the
entire emphasis of the story around the character of Ripley, even though
Sigourney had not been contacted. (The actress was not contractually obliged to
return.) After working solidly on the script for three and a half months Cameron
was annoyed when he discovered that she had still not been informed about his
project. In the end he telephoned Sigourney himself, but she wasn’t exactly
keen on the idea of doing a sequel and was deeply sceptical of the whole thing.
She thought that Cameron only wanted her in a scene-setting role and that Ripley
would then be killed off and she had no intention of becoming involved in a film
that was produced purely to make money for 20th Century Fox. Despite her strong
early misgivings a meeting between the two was arranged. Sigourney found Cameron
a genuinely talented and dedicated craftsman and recognized within him a sincere
love of and commitment to the project. She also admired the way in which he
wanted the Alien saga to progress and
develop. This was a man who would be worth working with. Most of all, she was
impressed by the way Cameron had treated Ripley. On reading the script Sigourney
was surprised to find that her character dominated the narrative; Ripley was in
virtually every scene. Sigourney also knew that Cameron wasn’t willing to make
a sequel without her. “I was egotistical enough to be moved by that.”
Cameron’s original intention was to begin the film with a long sequence
showing us how the alien horde invaded the colony. Newt’s parents come across
the derelict ship from the first film, and Newt’s father is attacked and
impregnated by an alien. These missing fifteen minutes were to have been
inserted back into the movie on a “special edition” video in 1990, but it
never materialized. The friendship between Ripley and Newt is at the core of the
film and Ripley’s maternal instinct is Cameron’s strongest theme. In another
important scene omitted from the final print Ripley is told that her daughter
has grown old and died while she was lost in space. Sigourney used a picture of
her own mother to react to when Ripley is shown a photograph of her
silver-haired daughter. The loss of Ripley’s daughter explains why she is so
attached to Newt. This was the aspect of the story that appealed to Sigourney
the most. “And I got terribly upset when it was cut out,”she explained to Première
magazine in October 1988, “That’s the whole reason I did the movie.”
The theme of motherhood permeates the entire work, from Ripley’s to the
alien queen furiously protecting her offspring. The film makes clear that the
queen is not inherently evil, she’s only doing what Ripley is trying to do: to
survive and to protect children. “Everybody may think we’re making a monster
film, but we’re really making a film about motherhood,” Sigourney told
reporters.
Working with Carrie Henn, the child actress who portrayed Newt, gave Sigourney
various insights into her future role as a mother. “You don’t nurture and
protect children,” she told Film Comment
in December 1986. “You just talk and are equals. Any attempt on my part to
guide or instruct was met with amusement by her.”
Sigourney had been so busy reading the script for human values that she
had inadvertently skipped over all references to guns. Only later did she admit
that she had totally underestimated the film’s reliance on violence and
weapons. Almost daily the cast were subjected to gun and grenade practice. For
an actress who is involved in a gun-control lobby in America it was an
embarrassing dilemma to be acting in a film which promoted the use of weapons to
such a high degree. The irony was not lost on Sigourney. Yet her experiences did
serve a moral purpose. Handling those destructive weapons gave Sigourney a
tremendous sensation of power, making her realize just how dangerous they can
be. “They intoxicate because they make you feel so powerful,” Sigourney said
to the Daily Express in August 1986.
“Now I’m more against them than I was when I started the film” She also
blamed Ripley’s reliance on nicotine as the reason for her renewed dependence
on cigarettes. Sigourney never smokes at home because of the smell. She dislikes
the stench of smoke on her fingers and on her hair and clothes. But on the Aliens
set smoking was a way of taking a quick break, a moment of inner relaxation
amidst all the pressure. Smoking was one of two bad habits that Sigourney picked
up in Britain. The other was a craving for take-away hamburgers at those rather
dubious street vendors that she wouldn’t go near back home in New York.
Aliens opened in America on 18 July 1986 and sold $42 million worth
of movie tickets. The fifth highest earner of the year, Aliens went on to become a worldwide hit, especially in Japan and
Britain, and met with a thunderously enthusiastic press response. “An
authentic masterpiece”; “the scariest movie in the history of cinema”; “Aliens
is the Citizen Kane of science fiction films”: these were just some of
the mighty accolades Cameron received. Critics also agreed, unanimously, that
Sigourney had created the toughest female screen character ever and that her
performance was nothing short of sensational. In October 1986 at a gala diner
hosted by America’s cinema owners Sigourney was voted Female Star of the Year.
This turned out to be the prelude to a far greater honour, her first Oscar
nomination. For the first time in cinema history the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences had nominated a woman appearing in a sci-fi/fantasy film in
the category of Best Actress. But Sigourney was up against stiff opposition and
she didn’t fancy her chances. There was Jane Fonda for The Morning After, Kathleen Turner for Peggy Sue Got Married, Marlee Matlin for Children of a Lesser God, and Sissy Spacek for Crimes
of the Heart. Marlee Matlin was the eventual winner.
A few months after the American release of Aliens Sigourney and Jim headed back up to Williamstown for a summer
season at a small playhouse, in Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke. In addition to her valiant summer-stock voyage,
Sigourney began to write again with old favourite Christopher Durang. In this
new collaboration she played a character called Sigourney Weaver - “but I’m
a truly horrible creature” - and Durang played a playwright named Christopher
Durang. Whoopi Goldberg was also involved, but after her acclaimed performance
in Spielberg’s The Colour Purple had
made her an overnight star Sigourney was left wondering if she would want to be
involved in their “stupid little film”. Perhaps the most realistic, and
obvious, proposal that came her way in 1986 was the chance to be directed by her
husband Jim.
The subject of the two of them working together had been raised on more
than one occasion in the previous year. The idea sounded hopeful and promised to
be fun, but Sigourney disagreed with those who claimed such a union would be a
major theatrical event. If such a thing was to happen it was imperative that the
couple find the right play. When they did, Sigourney soon discovered that both
of them had perhaps bitten off more than they could chew. The
Merchant of Venice remains William Shakespeare’s most controversial work
due to its depiction of Shylock, considered by many to be anti-semitic, a gross
caricature. Sigourney immediately rejected this view. For Sigourney the risk of
outbursts would only be a trifling inconvenience in the face of her main
objective: to prove herself that she could succeed in a classical role.
Sigourney was tackling a difficult Shakespearean woman: Portia.
Show business couples working together can often spell disaster.
Sometimes maratial and personal problems can creep into the rehearsal room,
causing friction and a poor working atmosphere. The pressures inherent in
putting on a show can add to the strain of married life, especially when both
the husband and the wife are working and living together twenty-four hours a
day. Luckily working on The Merchant of
Venice wasn’t that much of a burden on the Simpsons’ fledging marriage.
But there were problems, namely that Sigourney felt her husband was far tougher
on her during rehearsals than on any other cast member. But the experience was
an enjoyable one. “I think he is a wonderful director,” she told Cable
Guide magazine in July 1987. “So I married well.” Thoughts of a
re-match, however, were greeted less enthusiastically by Sigourney. “I’m not
sure he wants to work with me again. I think he found me difficult.” Sadly the
play was heavily panned. “We got killed,” Sigourney confessed to Première
magazine in October 1988. “I didn’t even read the reviews, but I know we got
killed.”
In 1985, at the time of Dian Fossey’s death, plans were already under
way to make a film about her life, based on her own book. (Dian once told
friends that she wanted Brooke Shields and Elizabeth Taylor to portray her at
different ages.) On Boxing Day 1985 producer Arnold Glimcher arrived in Rwanda
to visit Fossey, who had agreed to be a consultant on the movie. But Fossey was
butchered, as Glimcher slept off the effects of his long plane journey at a
hotel in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital. The following morning where Fossey’s
research centre was located was sealed off as an investigation into the brutal
killing began. Glimcher reluctantly forced to admit defeat. After the sudden
death of Fossey there seemed no future for his project. But the producer
remained in Rwanda for a week, interviewing Fossey’s friends and co-workers.
He believed he had uncovered a mulit-layered complexity to the woman’s life
that had scarcely been touched upon in her autobiography.
Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles, Warner Bros. were already planning to make their
own version of the Fossey story and had hired Bob Rafelson to direct Heaven
and Earth: The Tragic Life and Death of Dian Fossey, with Ann-Margaret in
the lead. Blissfully unaware of the mounting competition, Glimcher had won the
backing of Universal and the search for a suitable director for his project
began in earnest. The two opposing studios first learnt of one another’s
intentions when their representatives met quite by chance in a hotel lobby in
Kigali. Both studios eventually agreed to share the costs and jointly produce
Glimcher’s Gorillas in the Mist. Bob Rafelson was dropped because he wanted to
portray Fossey as a raving lunatic. Finally, British director Michael Apted was
selected. Like Glimcher, Apted was interested in making an uplifting picture,
“not a film about a crank”. Apted’s familiarity with the documentary genre
(Granada Television’s 28 Up and Sting’s Bring on the Night), and his feature
work (Stardust, The Coalminer’s Daughter, Gorky Park), held him in good stead
for a movie that merged fact and fiction in a quasi-documentary form.
The most troublesome pre-production chore was finding an appropriate
actress to play Dian Fossey. Practically every major female star in Hollywood
wanted the role. Sigourney Weaver quickly established herself as the leading
contender after Jessica Lange, the producer’s first choice, became pregnant.
Both studios agreed that Sigourney was perfect. In Apted’s estimation
Sigourney was one of only six or seven actresses in the world who could have got
a company to finance such an uncommercial property and had the strength and
presence to succeed.
The last thing the actress wanted to do was get involved in some glossy
Hollywood fairy tale. Early talk about concentrating the film on Dian Fossey’s
sad and lonely descent into madness also caused Sigourney distress. She didn’t
see Dian’s single-mindedness about her “cause” as a sign of insanity. She
and Apted were more interested in showing on screen a woman of courage and
staggering achievements, to make her philosophy and passion available to a wider
audience. They do not totally ignore the murky aspect of her life. Although the
film is deeply prejudiced in Fossey’s favour, Apted often shows her in
an unflattering light. The final dark scenes are among the film’s
finest as we see her fall into an abyss of despair of her own making and wonder
if the bruised, fanatical woman, reprimanding politicans and wealthy poachers,
and torturing her enemies, is not “going ape” herself. It is a tribute to
Sigourney’s performance and Apted’s careful direction that they have the
courage to de-glamorize their subject.
Sigourney took great pleasure in filling the parts of Fossey out with as
much detail as she could. The actress studied hours of film footage of the
woman, analysing her body movements and gestures in much the same way as Fossey
herself had learned how to mimic her beloved gorillas. She read every news
clipping and book she could lay her hands on in an effort to foster an
understanding of Dian’s character and motivation. As the research continued
apace Sigourney found herself completely entranced by Fossey and shocked by the
harsh contrasts that existed in her life. She was a creature of opposites, seen
by many as a great scientist and by others as a charlatan. Fossey was capable of
caring and tender moments; while at other times, particularly towards the end of
her life, she was a foul-mouthed, hard-drinking, chain-smoking bitch. The
complexity of the woman was fascinating. During filming, Dian Fossey became a
part of Sigourney’s life. She is prone to become obsessive about the
characters she plays and once they are gone she can miss their company for
months. The ghost of Dian Fossey took a lot longer to exorcize mainly because of
her death and the cause for which she fought. Not only was Dian Fossey the most
demanding role of Sigourney’s career to date but she was also quite unique:
this woman had actually once lived, she was no fanciful creation conceived by
some writer’s despot imagination. “She was a complex subject and I really
wanted to play a real woman, something incredible to act.”
As with Aliens, Sigourney was
once again burdened with the awesome responsibility of carrying a major movie
single-handed. Although consistently upstaged by her primate co-stars, if
Sigourney were to give a bad performance, irrespective of the film’s other
sparkling merits, Gorillas in the Mist
would have fallen flat on its face.
Principal photography on Gorillas
in the Mist began on 2 July 1987, close to Fossey’s Karisoke Research
Centre and her sad, lonely grave. Sigourney found working so close to where
Fossey had actually lived an inspiration. On one occasion she thought it would
be an interesting and beneficial exercise to visit Fossey’s small and
unpretentious home. This was a serious mistake. The experience deeply upset the
actress and left her devastated for days afterwards. Once inside, Sigourney had
walked into the very room where Dian had met her death. All her personal
belongings were still there and the mattress on which she was murdered still
bore her bloodstains. “I’m not a great believer in psychic phenomena, but I
felt something evil had happened there.”
Working with wild animals is highly dangerous and unpredictable, not
least when one is dealing with so rare a creature as the mountain gorilla.
Sigourney was naturally apprehensive about meeting the apes for the first time.
Her fears were manifold: would the gorillas accept her, would she know what to
do and, most worrying of all, would she panic? But the thrill of following in
the footsteps of Dian Fossey bolstered her spirit. Trudging through vast
vegetation they located a gorilla family close to Dian’s grave. Their
presence, detected when they heard “pok, pok, pok, pok, pok”, the
destinctive sound of the male beating his chest; and the tell-tale noise of the
apes chewing on foliage. Suddenly, there in front of Sigourney was a mammoth
silverback, staring down at her like a king before a humble subject. “I
don’t think I ever looked back after that,” she told Interview
magazine in July 1988. “It was like walking into a forest and seeing a
unicorn.” Sigourney steadied herself and crouched down among the undergrowth.
Suddenly a young female, Jozi, waddled up towards the actress and sat beside
her. Sigourney’s heart began to beat hysterically as she battled to contain
her excitement. Never before had she been so close to a wild animal. In that
single moment all of Sigourney’s fears and anxieties melted away. The tiny
gorilla next to her seemed so friendly and innocently curious as it reached over
to study her camera. Jozi then leaned up against Sigourney and began to quiz her
strange white face. Weaver had been taught basic gorilla etiquette by an African
tracker and knew the importance of not looking directly into the eyes of an ape.
But emotions were running high and the temptation was too great to resist
meeting Jozi’s inquisitive gaze. Among those gorillas, many of which Fossey
herself had studied, Sigourney felt at peace, almost at home. “There was
nowhere in the world I wanted to be more than right there.”
Apted’s base camp was
situated at the foot of Fossey’s mountain and each day Sigourney and the crew
had to climb up the steep slopes in search of the gorillas living at extremely
high altitudes at least two or three hours away. Once the team had to walk eight
hours before finding them. Conditions were horrendous: the temperature was
constantly shifting from hot to cold, and it invariably rained. Because of the
strict rules imposed on the production by the local authorities only a maximum
of six people were allowed near the gorillas at any one time. Such restrictions
created formidable problems. The film unit had to be stripped to a bare minimum
(even Apted had to occasionally double as assistant cameraman), and everyone had
to carry their own equipment up the mountain. During the course of filming the
astonishing rapport between Sigourney and the gorillas prospered. She grew more
confident in their presence and would spend hours at a time crouching in the
long grass with the apes, adopting their gestures, munching on some shrubs with
them, as Dian had done, and even learning their special talk, a combination of
body language and belching. To achieve some of the more intimate shots of
Sigourney and the gorillas, a small transmitter was placed in her ear through
which she was coached in a series of hair-raising situations. In this way some
truly amazing scenes were achieved without putting the actress in any
unnecessary danger. About midway through filming, Sigourney became adept at
recognizing all the gorillas and identifying their individual personalities. She
had her favourites, of course, like Maggie, a quaint female who was very
friendly. Others were less hospitable. One huge gorilla called Pablo was known
to have dragged women down the mountain. But Sigourney quickly learnt that if
she sat next to Ziz, the huge silverback that the actress described as “a
450-pound version of Rodin’s ‘The Thinker’ with a head the size of a
boulder”, then Pablo never bothered her. And there was Shinda, perhaps the
most boistereous of the group, who seemed to flirt openly with Sigourney.
During those three months
of location filming in Africa, Apted and his crew managed to capture on camera
some truly unique shots of the gorillas interacting with Sigourney Weaver. These
he would later call “the heartbeat of the movie”. A great deal of patience
was required in order to achieve these shots. Often the crew had to wait for
hours to see what the apes were going to do. The gorillas had a profound effect
on everyone who worked on the film; no one left untouched by the experience.
Watching the wild mountain gorillas living in their natural habitat, eating,
playing with their young, and generally enjoying life, is something Sigourney
will never forget. She especially loved playing with the young gorillas. They
were sometimes so enthusiastic that they crawled all over her. One of the
mothers would always be on hand just to make sure no harm came to them, although
it was usually the other way around. The gorilla young had a nasty habit of
swinging on Sigourney’s pigtails causing her excruciating pain. But these were
joyous and cherished moments. “Roaming around with their babies all day made
me realize how much I wanted a child of my own.”
When the time came to leave the jungle and the gorillas and fly to London and Shepperton Studios for interior work, Sigourney’s heart was in danger of breaking. She felt like she was leaving behind old friends. Her extraordinary rapport with the gorillas won her the admiration of everyone concerned with the picture. Unquestionably, the highest compliment came from Roz Carr, who was one of Fossey’s closests friends in Rwanda. After viewing the film she was in awe of Weaver’s performance. “Sigourney is perfect as Dian, and I’m so grateful for that.” Others who were close to Fossey all agreed that Sigourney had captured the woman’s essence memorably.
That October Sigourney
returned to Rwanda to visit the gorilla group, eager to find out whether or not
they still remembered her. Along with a group of guides and a trusty film crew
Sigourney walked up the familiar path of Fossey’s mountain gallantly trying to
keep a tight rein on her emotions. In a clearing they came across the gorillas
who casually strolled past her without the merest hint of recognition. Perhaps
it was wrong of Sigourney to have expected some kind of human response from the
gorillas. Still, she couldn’t help but feel bitterly disappointed and hurt.
Then Maggie came over and laid her warm hand on Sigourney’s shoulder and
squeezed it gently. Sigourney burst into tears, they rolled down her cheeks, and
she had to turn her face away from the camera in embarrassment. It was clear
that Maggie, in her own way, had just said, “Hi.” “That’s why I don’t
want to let too much time go by before I go back. I always want to go back.”
Filming Gorillas in the Mist and
working so closely with the apes and animal conservationists changed
Sigourney’s outlook on life dramatically. The actress became a champion for
animal rights and began to call for the preservation of all endangered species.
“I think now I see gorillas as our fellow creatures in the way Dian did,”
Sigourney told Films and Filming in
March 1989. “One of our great mistakes is that humans think of the world as
their planet and take animals for granted.”
Sigourney has now adopted Maggie and sends regular donations to the
Karisoke Centre, continuing in her own way the invaluable work started by Dian
Fossey. Over the last few years Sigourney has been working with other charities.
One of the few saving graces of her celebrity status is that she can call
attention to certain political issues. In the latter half of 1986 she spoke at
the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights benefit honouring Mrs Aquino. Sigourney
was proud to be involved with the group which, like Amnesty International, was a
non-partisan organization that investigated human rights violations by
governments of all political persuasions. Perhaps due to the very nature of
their work actors tend to be very sensitive about humanitarian issues. “We
look into individual souls. We care about human beings.” Sigourney disclosed
to Film Comment in December 1986. “If you don’t, you don’t become
an actor.”
Gorillas in the Mist
opened in America in September 1988. Sigourney’s performance was unanimously
acclaimed wherever the movie played and she just deserved her second Oscar
nomination. Coincidentally she was also nominated the same year for her
supporting role in Working Girl.
Sigourney was widely tipped to snatch the top award, but ended up losing both.
She was naturally flattered that her work had been acknowledged by the academy,
but was disappointed to lose out twice in the same evening. But a Golden Globe
award for Best Actress proved ample compensation.
Gorillas in the Mist
is Sigourney’s favourite film. Along with The Year of Living Dangerously,
she feels the picture has something important and valid to express. Certainly
the role of Dian Fossey is Sigourney’s most rewarding to date. The film even
managed to do some global good - educating people about the gorillas. It also
raised the rate of tourism to Rwanda. Provided this is carefully regulated, all
that western money pouring in will help build a future for the mountain
gorillas. Sigourney was also invited to the United Nations to accept a
posthumous medal on behalf of Dian Fossey from the president of Rwanda. Even
today she feels honoured and privileged to have been entrusted with the awesome
obligation of playing Fossey on screen. “I feel like I’ve finally gone
legit.”
An offer in the early months of 1988 to play a small role in Working Girl (a pleasantly enjoyable romantic comedy with a sound old-fashioned base), arrived at exactly the right time for Sigourney. Her previous two films had been real epics and her roles in them were monumentally tough and demanding. The idea of playing a supporting role for once and letting another actress take on the responsibility of carrying the movie was certainly appealing. The film’s New York location was a further enticement. “I accepted because I got to wear pretty clothes and sleep in my own bed at night.” Ever since her collaboration on Hurlyburly Sigourney had been anxious to work with Mike Nichols again. The part Nichols was offering her in Working Girl was a pure gem, a character quite unlike any she had yet personified on screen. Katharine Parker was hardly a crowd-pleasing role. Audiences in America were not above booing the heartless character. When Sigourney was told about the effect her portrayal was having on audiences she found it all quite amusing. “I think just about everybody in America now hates me," she joked.
Her upper class breeding often works against Sigourney career-wise. But
in the case of Working Girl this was exactly what Nichols wanted and the
director actively encouraged her to take on the part. Sigourney plays Parker
with winning comic style. Her portrayal is a joy to watch, especially the scenes
where she lies in a hospital bed with her leg in plaster after the accident,
eternally on the phone and ordering the hospital staff around like slaves; or
her delicious feigning of intimacy and office sisterhood with Tess.
Unfortunately, in the latter stage of the movie Nichols turns Katharine into a
figure of fun, a caricature. One’s sympathies tend to float towards her at the
end when her ruse is uncovered and she is ridiculed by all and sundry and fired
on the spot. Working Girl opened in America on 21 December 1988 and proved
enormously popular with the public, amassing $60 million at the box-office.
Sigourney’s performance won the Best Supporting Actress award at the Golden
Globes in January 1989, a ceremony Sigourney seems always to do well at. She
also received an Oscar nomination in the same category. The film itself fared
surprisingly well with a bag of six nominations, including Best Film.
Sigourney Weaver´s battleground is Hollywood. During the release of Working
Girl she unwittingly stirred up a hornet´s nest when she publicly demanded
equal pay with male stars. She used her prominence as one of America´s leading
female celebrities to lend weight to the argument that male actors are paid
proportionally too much for their services. Sigourney cited Working
Girl as a prime example. Both she and Melanie Griffith were paid about half
Harisson Ford´s fee. Sigourney eventually decided that, to garantuee her
income, she would have to work for herself. Today, like Barbra Streisand, she
owns her own production company, christened Goat Cay and based in New York, a
potent indication of her increasing significance in American cinema. The actress
hopes in the near future to begin nurturing and developing her own film
projects. "I´m having a wonderful time producing," Sigourney
disclosed to a journalist in 1990. "There are good producers and bad
producers. I´ve learned the hard way what not to do. The ultimate aim is to
produce things I´m not actually in. I´m not looking for vehicles for myself.
It´s not a vanity company."
When the sequel to the hugely successfull Ghostbusters
opened in America in the summer of 1989 no one was really surprised: such an
eventuality was as inevitable as Christmas. Ghostbusters
2 isn´t so much a sequel as a complete re-make of the first film. Whereas
Aliens enlarged on its predecessor to the point of familiarity, presenting
the audience with a completely new movie experience at the same time, Murray and
the others took the easy route of just rehearsing old ideas and situations, only
less successfully. But the movie seems to work. Ghostbusters
2 is fairly enjoyable stuff. It has no pretentions about being anything else
but huge, entertaining romp. But compared to the sparkling originality displayed
in the earlier movie this is a tired and disappointing sequel.
During the weeks of outdoor location work in the streets of New York,
Sigourney was privy to some incredible sights of fan adulation. All around the
cordoned-off Manhattan areas, hundreds of New Yorkers would gather, chanting the
Ghostbusters theme. Groups of kids
would point out and shout with glee upon recognizing the actors. Midway through
the shooting, the Oscar nominations were announced and Sigourney found herself
nominated in two acting categories (for Gorillas in the Mist and Working
Girl). This was an achievement that Bill Murray saw fit to ridicule for the
rest of the filming. "They tortured me, those guys," recalled
Sigourney in light jest. Whenever she seemed to be getting too serious in her
acting for Murray´s taste he would announce every time she walked onto the set,
"Here she comes, fellas, the two-time Oscar nominee herself." Once,
during a break from filming, Murray inexplicably began spitting hair balls at
Sigourney, just like a cat. Ivan Reitman had to cut in and tell him to stop it.
"Bill thinks I´m too stiff and is continually freaking me out on the
set," Sigourney complained in a Time
Out interview at the beginning of 1989. "Hanging me upside down,
tickling my nose."
Ghostbusters 2 was released in America at a time when Columbia
Pictures was in dire financial straits. A string of box-office disasters had
lowered the company´s credibility and they now badly needed a smash hit. A
failure could spell the collapse of the studio. All hopes were pinned on Ghostbusters 2 to deliver the goods. Luckily, the movie was an
unqualified success and Columbia claimed the biggest ever three-day opening in
cinema history, with box-office receipts in excess of $29 million.
On a more personal level, as soon as she had heard that Dana Barrett was to be given a child she was immediately interested. For the past few years Sigourney and Jim Simpson had been trying desperately and without successs to have a child. In preparation for the maternal duties she would have to perform in front of the cameras, Sigourney practised bathing co-star Rick Moranis´s new baby. The experience paid off, for when it came time to meet the seven-month-old twins William and Henry Deutschendorf, who were to play Oscar, Sigourney was surging with confidence. "Holding a baby the right way up came much more naturally than I thought," she disclosed to You magazine in December 1989. "I guess instinct took over. In fact I found them very interesting little creatures." Sigourney´s on-screen role of mother turned out to be a dry run for the real thing. A few months after the June premiere of Ghostbusters 2 Sigourney, to her obvious delight, was told that she was pregnant. By a strange coincidence, Dan Aykroyd´s wife also had a baby, as did the wife of Harold Ramis. Perhaps working with the young Deutschendorf twins had an effect on them all.
Sigourney decided to put her career on hold and take a year off to have
her first child, a luxury few other women can afford. Prior to her long
sabbatical a heavily pregnant Sigourney still managed a few publicity rounds,
drumming up business for Ghostbusters 2.
For journalists this was a rare chance to catch the mood and emotions of the
mother-to-be. Generally she was taking things easy, spending her days reading a
multitude of different books about birth and motherhood, filling her mind with
theories about babies, and shopping around for maternity wear, a chore which she
found both time-consuming and unpleasant. "Maternity clothes are all so
awful," Sigourney complained to You magazine in November 1989.
"If I wear Laura Ashley stuff, being so tall, it makes me look like a
kindergarten child in time warp." Sigourney seemed to be having fun with
her pregnancy. After she had concluded her promotional duties for Ghostbusters
2 she withdrew from the spotlight and disappeared from view. Sigourney and
Jim retired to their newly built home near the Canadian border ("I won´t
tell anybody where we are. Real estate is becoming synonymous with peace and
quiet...."), where they planned to spend the majority of their time in lush
solitude and tranquility, at last beginning the family they had always dreamed
of sharing.
In preparation of the birth of their child Sigourney and Jim Simpson
acquired a luxurious new home on the outskirts of New York and waited. A few
months into the new decade, April to be exact, Sigourney gave birth to a little
girl, christened Charlotte, in a New York hospital. Her life was now complete.
Sigourney had been a film star for ten years and now at the age of forty she was
at last a mother. The daughter of showbiz parents herself, Sigourney often
wonders how her own stardom will affect Charlotte. “I hope she won’t be too
interested in what Mommy does for a living for a while.”
As Sigourney Weaver continues to mature and flourish as a
leading/character actress in the same vein as Katharine Hepburn and Jane Fonda,
one gets the distinct impression that we haven’t seen the best of her yet.
Sigourney, however, has her own private ambition. “Well, I’ve always admired
Margaret Rutherford. Like her I’d like to play Miss Marple when I’m
eighty.” Now wouldn’t that be a sight worth waiting for.
This biography is a extract of
the book Sigourney Weaver by Robert
Sellers (sadly out of print right now)