Weaver, Sigourney ,
1949- , American actress, b. New York, N.Y., as Susan Alexandra Weaver,
Stanford Univ. (B.A., 1972), Yale Univ. (M.F.A., 1974). Weaver’s
father was a well-known television executive, Sylvester “Pat”
Weaver, her mother was an English actress, and her uncle,
“Doodles” Weaver, was a character actor and comedian. While
attending Yale Drama School, she befriended playwright Christopher Durang, and coauthored a two-person
show with him; after graduation, she appeared in the Off-Broadway production
of his Beyond Therapy (1991), and then starred in several
of his subsequent plays. After acting in New York on stage and television,
she made her breakthrough in the sci-fi/horror epic Alien
(1979), playing the action-hero Ellen Ripley, among the first film portrayal
that challenged traditional gender roles. She reprised the role in the
film’s three sequels (Aliens, 1986; Alien
3, 1992; Alien Resurrection, 1997). Weaver
became known for playing a wide variety of comic and serious roles,
including portraying Bill Murray's love interest in
Ghostbusters (1984; Ghostbusters II,
1989), primatologist Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist
(for which she won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, drama) the
hard-driving boss in Working Girl (both 1988), and as the
matriarch of the Carver family in The Ice Storm (1997).
After a period of taking smaller roles, Weaver returned in another monster
blockbuster, Avatar (2011).
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