Sigourney Weaver

Interview By: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com

In Hollywood, there is nothing more threatening to an actress's shelf life than age, especially middle age. While many of them may make the always risky venture of plastic surgery, Sigourney Weaver has gracefully and almost unexpectedly defied the odds to become one of the industry's most enduring actresses.

From the Alien and Ghostbusters films to Galaxy Quest to her incredible performance as a childlike autistic woman in Snow Cake, Weaver is still lights up the screen at the age of 58. In a still largely male-dominated industry, the actress states that what is a credit to her longevity is her tenaciousness to get the most exciting and three-dimensional roles possible in her age group.

'I happen to think in the old days, there were plenty of women's parts, in the 30's and 40's,' she believes, 'It's true that my parts have gotten more interesting as I had gotten older. I don't think it's a big change that people are noticing now. I think that when a mature actor has a big hit like The Devil Wears Prada, that certainly helps. But I think that great stories have great women's parts. Great women's parts, none of those parts are the ing'nue, they are often the least interesting parts.

However, Weaver is careful to also note that despite the many more doors being open now for female performers than when she started in the 1970's, the industry still has a long way to go from a complete sense of feminist progression.

'I'm glad people are more aware, but I don't think I really perceive an increase in these parts,' Sigourney says, 'I hope one is sent women's parts that aren't the clich' 'dragon' parts,' said I think there's still a lot of those out there and I think one's job is to maneuver around so you can avoid playing an insulting role or get a script that's semi-insulting, you work with the writer or the director to make it really.'

'But I think as baby boomers age, I think the whole world is shifting and growing old with grace when your thirty and forty is not just a show business thing,' she adds, 'It's a thing that older women are putting out because we take care of ourselves and stay active and have energy. I do think older women are fascinating.'

Her latest role as an older woman is TV news producer Rex Brooks, caught in the middle of multiple accounts of an assassination attempt on a U.S. president, in the thriller Vantage Point. Sigourney first shared with us what motivated her to do the role.

'Well, it really seemed like this old-fashioned thriller where the ground keeps shifting under the feet of the viewer and I just thought it was a great idea for a movie,' Weaver says, 'It's sort of these eccentric circles to getting into what happened in this and the truth about any of these events is that we only get kind of the outside. A lot of things we don't get told or the news people don't get told. It shows a lot of the inner workings. I just thought it was a brilliant idea.'

The film, which stars Weaver alongside acting greats like Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, Forest Whitaker and William Hurt, is one she says was beset with many roadblocks which made the filming process complicated. The first for her was pulling off a role that initially had intended to be male.

'A man named Rex, I'm told, and I found him full of testosterone, I have to say, so I think I tried to heed the same strength and ambition, but in a woman's way,' Sigourney notes, 'So she's definitely in charge and the truth is women have the positions now, so I just think how great it is to make it in a movie.'

The second challenge for the theater-trained actress was the lack of rehearsal time to prepare for the film.

'Well, we actually were supposed to have rehearsal for Vantage Point, but we didn't, because they were working six-day weeks,' Weaver states, 'And I think that was the hard part because technically, we had to be in a room with like twenty screens and we didn't ever see the room before we started to shoot us and everything I say is to do with something on screen.'

'And it took a long time for us because they would show us some footage that we could have looked at, but we weren't allowed to look at images in the wrong direction,' she continues, 'We had to look here, we had to look there, so technically speaking, it was the hardest job I ever had to do. And when they finally shot from the back, what we do see, even though it was a green screen, at least we could see the world we were in and how complicated it was. And now, we're used to how to run all the machines and all the technical stuff, we didn't get the kind of help that we needed until by the end, we had it.'

Despite the lack of rehearsal time, Sigourney says she was more than up to the challenge and it contributes to her strengths as a performer.

'I always like to have a couple of days rehearsal,' I think it's really nice. I always used to do rehearsal for the theater. I don't expect three weeks, but it's good for the scene to gel and explode on screen, so we didn't get that experience. But we did have more time with Be Kind, Rewind, it was sort of improvisation, but I like working both ways, I really do. I like the challenge of working this difficult thing technically of not being able to see what I was reacting to on page. I got used to it, but it's the life of the actor. You'll never know quite what you're going to get until you are actually there.'

The actress meticulously prepared herself for the role as a news producer. So she did her research at NBC News, a network of which her own father, Sylvester 'Pat' Weaver Jr., was president of in the early 1950's.

'I did research over at NBC, so I hung out over there for a few days,' she notes, 'And when I got there, at one of the later days, the British had found the guys that were going on the planes with the liquids. It was a fascinating day. They were having me sit in on discussions. I was just so impressed and I think the main thing I learned doing research at NBC was at Nightly News and The Today Show.'

Sigourney notes that what she learned most from the experience is the level of precise professionalism in the industry when it comes to covering news.

'When I was watching them, the most interesting thing I learned was that when people have these jobs, whatever emotions that they have, whether it's a day later or something, they really keep cool,' Weaver claims, 'And they really concentrate on putting out the stories and getting the facts. At least at NBC, there was no attempt to manipulate the facts in any direction, Republican or Democrat or anything. I was so impressed with how they go about it and how the reporters was watching this guy who was at the war between Israel and Lebanon.'

'The missile was flying right over this guy's head and he never stopped,' she adds, 'They have a couple laughs when he finished his report and said, 'I'm going to have a drink'. But the cool these people keep is quite extraordinary and I try to bring that. The character's written in a very flamboyant way and I try to tone her down and make her very focused in what she needs to do, if she's in charge of a live mission. And it's not very typical that she has a reporter that reacts emotionally, so there are things that she has to cope with that I have to ask a lot of questions about using the experts and it was very helpful.'

With that in mind, we asked the longtime actress if the experience doing Vantage Point ever compelled her to be in the journalism profession.

'I do in the sense that I wanted to be a journalist and really being actor is kind of the same idea in a way because you go into the middle of the story and experience it and then, you come out and give it to us,' Sigourney replies, 'So I think a journalist has to be in the middle of it and give it to us. I think that curiosity and that desire for the truth and that desire to put it out straight and the goal of that I think, to me, is what journalism is all about.'

'I think it was because I was so shy in college that it was easier in a way to hide behind other personas rather than use my own persona to bash my way into a competitive industry,' she continues, 'Is it too late' Maybe not. I think nothing is as interesting as real life, that's why I am an actor, but I think the whole thing is incredibly exciting.'

It's that sense of reality that allows the actress to be proud of her work on Vantage Point as we touched upon what was her opinion of the final film.

'I thought it was fascinating to start with the objective viewpoint setting it up and showing you the world and with each concentric circle, you go in deeper and deeper to the crime,' Weaver says, 'I just thought it was a brilliant idea for a movie. And I love how every now and then, the characters come back who were in another section, but I think they did an awfully good job.'

The film isn't the first to be released this year that she has appeared in. She plays lawyer Ms. Lawson in the Jack Black comedy Be Kind Rewind. When asked about how she enjoyed working on the film, the actress claimed she was blown away by the unique premise.

'It was funny, they needed this part, so Michel Gondry called me,' she recalls, 'And basically told me they were shooting this part and they gave me the script and I read the part and I found it incredibly charming. My part was hard, because I come down and ruin it for everybody, so worked really hard to get the lawyerese.'

'And when I got to the set, most directors would say, oh, now, let's rehearse a couple times, but they don't rehearse for Michel, so I haven't seen it, but it was just the weirdest language for me to say,' Sigourney adds, 'And the first time we did a take, I went up every sentence because I missed every archaic expression that was about what they were doing. Anyway, he just showed me a lot of the footage and I just found it incredibly charming, just a fabulous idea for a movie.'

That very idea is the concept of two guys filming their own amateurishly recorded versions of movies after Jack Black's character accidentally demagnetizes and erases the VHS tapes in an electrical accident. We asked Weaver what films of hers she personally would love to see remade by the film's characters.

'Ghostbusters is one of the movies they do and I have to say it's pretty priceless,' she replies, 'I think they chose the right one. It would be funny for them to do Gorillas In The Mist or Working Girl. Really, those guys they are funny when they do almost anything, but I think I was particularly pleased that they did Ghostbusters. It's sort of like the Ghostbusters for today, with that innocence and craziness.'

Another film she is working on at the moment is the hotly anticipated Avatar, which will reunite her with James Cameron, whom she worked with previously for Aliens. When asked about the film, Sigourney says she was deeply excited working with the now-legendary director again.

'I adore working with him,' she says of him, 'We picked up like we never stopped. He's written a terrific part for me, a fascinating older woman, very driven, very funny, but a huge heart and a great sense of urgency in her life. I can't really talk too much about it, but I can say it was a great experience working in New Zealand. They're still there.'

Sigourney Weaver's long career as an actress is one that has spanned over 30 years, appearing in countless films. As there are many that get, inadvertently or not, lost in the shuffle due to audience tastes, we gave Weaver the opportunity to share with us what films she has performed in that she believes are potentially underrated and unnoticed gems.

'Well, I think Snow Cake is a movie that I think a lot of people would have enjoyed seeing and these things happen,' Sigourney believes, 'But I mean I really do think that it's not the industry I would have liked it to be. I would like people to know about it, so they could rent it at least or I would like us to have it a proper theatrical release.'

'A movie I also did, called The Girl In The Park, with Kate Bosworth also has a good soul,' she continues, 'I just hope they do a good job with that because it's a fascinating film and I'm sure people would love to go see it. So my fingers are crossed that that gets a good release. There's no point in working as hard as you do and find that no one sees it, you really feel kind of incomplete. You feel like your job isn't done until you actually experience it on the other end. It's very incomplete to me. I'm still very proud of A Map Of The World as well.'