Creature Comforts
Interview with Stephen Applebaum for The Big Issue
18-24 September 2006
Who can forget Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley in the Alien films? A far cry from the computer geek fantasy of Lara Croft, she was cool, intelligent and tough, and most importantly, real. So iconic is Ripley that talk inevitably turns to the Alien films when I meet Weaver to discuss her latest movie, Snow Cake. Ironically, it is the one she did not appear in, the cross-franchise dud Alien Vs Predator, which dominates the conversation.
"It was because I heard about it that I wanted to die in the third one," she explains sharply. "I said, 'Just get rid of me, I don't want to be around.' And then they cloned me." Weaver appears rather pleased that the film flopped. "It kind of serves them right. I haven't seen it, but I have a feeling that the alien might not have even won. That's shocking."
At 56, the statuesque New Yorker looks like she could still play Ripley without embarrassment. Harrison Ford is returning as Indiana Jones. Has she thought about going into space again?
"I think the creature has been maxed out, especially after that awful movie. But the character, the situation in space..." Weaver pauses for a moment, and then admits that she and Ridley Scott have talked about bringing Ripley back.
"It was a great character," she reflects, "and I was lucky because I got to play an active woman in real clothes instead of a little skimpy thing."
Weaver's latest role is a far cry from action territory, though she does bounce up and down on a trampoline. She plays a woman with autism, whose obsessively regimented life is disturbed when a stranger, played by Alan Rickman (her co-star in Galaxy Quest), comes knocking at her door. He was driving the car in which her daughter was killed when it was hit by a snow plough.
Accepting Weaver as Linda inevitably takes a bit of effort. It is fine when an unknown plays someone with a mental or physical disorder - as Daniel Day-Lewis was when he starred in My Left Foot - but there is a lot of baggage to contend with when you are a famous Hollywood star. It was a risk, but she says, "I thought the idea of playing someone who needs people, but doesn't necessarily connect with them in a neurotypical way, was fascinating. Just the fact it wasn't really about autism seemed like a good way to approach it."
While researching the condition, Weaver discovered that she had some things in common with her character. Despite being a showbiz veteran, she is shy in public. "When people approach me, I'm very bad at that," she admits. "So the one thing I can absolutely relate to is the self-consciousness of the autistic person that doesn't want to to be looked at. I think a lot of actors are not particularly outgoing in general situations," she muses, "and the fact that people are staring at you, when you want to study them, is a weird part of this business. I totally related to that."
One of the most intriguing aspects of Linda is her apparent inability to fully comprehend the loss of her daughter. Tears suddenly appear in Weaver's eyes and her voice cracks as she talks about a scene where Linda imagines them dancing together in the snow. "I was kind of sceptical about that because it sounded a little touchy-feely to me," she says. "But, in fact, when I watched it for the first time, I was so glad, because it made so much sense that Linda would somehow create a way for herself to very privately say goodbye to Vivian. That was the most moving moment to me," she chokes.
Weaver's unexpected reaction may have to do with her also being the mother of a teenage daughter. When Charlotte was a baby Weaver says she experienced the same kind of all-consuming joy from "snuggling with my daughter" that Linda gets from eating snow. They're still close, but Weaver is not the smothering kind. Asked how she feels about Charlotte running around New York alone, she smiles knowingly. "I think it is scary for the parent but you have to be firm with yourself and let them live." She laughs.
"But I'm sure I've traumatised her by saying everything that can happen to her. She's always chastising me about making her paranoid. She and her group go everywhere the subway, and have since I were 13. When I was a kid in New York I was going everywhere at the age of nine. No one was with me and I thought that was perfectly normal. The world is a bit more dangerous now," she reflects.
Weaver is now at an age when many female actors start complaining about a paucity of good roles. It does not seem to have affected her, though. Still to come are another film about Truman Capote, an animated fairy tale and a Roshamon-style thriller. It is true nonetheless, she says, that there are more good roles for men than women. But even this can be overcome. When Ben Stiller had to drop out of the role of a network president in the movie The TV Set, for example, she stepped in.
"If a part is well written it really doesn't matter," suggests Weaver. "What was funny is that 'he' was obsessed with women breasts and whether they were real or not. It's funny if a man is, sort of. But it's much funnier if woman is always looking at other women's breasts and feeling if they're real or not. The objectifying of women by another woman is, first of all, quite accurate, and also very funny." Juicy roles for women are out there, then. "Sometimes you just have to be very inventive about getting them."
So, with neither age nor gender an insurmountable barrier, can we expect a lot more from her in the future? "When I turn 90 is when I want my career to be over," defiantly laughs the woman who battled the Alien.