Actresses like her, there are not many. Susan Alexandra Weaver, known as “Sigourney”, is not only an emblematic figure of the 1980s: she forged for action cinema, hitherto doped with testosterone, a type of heroine with incredible firepower , having opened the door to many more. If we remember her as the unforgettable Lieutenant Ripley of the saga Aliengrappling with the giant tadpoles of space, or even in working girl of the triumphant Wall Street, the actress never ceased to evade labels, such as the unbridled iconization of the Reagan decade that marked her emergence. We find her today, at the age of 73, in Master Gardenerveteran Paul Schrader, 76, as a rich heiress with an iron fist watching over the flower gardens that made her famous, alongside Joel Edgerton in the skin of a very personal gardener, over whom she reigns.
In recent times, the public has been able to find you on the bill of many films. How do you envision this phase of your career?
I feel lucky for a 73-year-old actress to still have such varied roles. And good roles, roles of strong women, full-bodied characters, who have an active sex life. The industry is such that a career can go through a lot of ups and downs, a lot of black holes, but I’m happy with what’s happening to me.
You have known all the evolutions of Hollywood since your beginnings as an actress, at the end of the 1970s. How does the landscape of the industry appear to you today?
I was at the Oscars this year with my husband, and it was the first time we enjoyed the ceremony so much, because there was a sense of community there. I felt there were all kinds of people represented at the Oscars. It felt like a very small, intimate group. Even if we still make too much of the competition, of having to win a statuette. Picking one out of five nominated winners, as the flow of the ceremony dictates, I feel is a bit of an old-fashioned protocol.
Do you ever find inspiration in some of your past roles, women of character like Ripley, the astronaut from “Alien”, or the primatologist Dian Fossey, from “Gorillas in the Mist”?
Not consciously. And I do not recognize myself in the fact of playing so-called “strong women”, because for me women are strong in essence. I just play women as far as I’m concerned. And I care a lot about female audiences. I want a woman sitting alone in the room, who has escaped her life, to look at something that is meaningful to her, that can take her out of herself. May she always recognize a sister person on the screen.
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