Sigourney Weaver Links

Sigourney Weaver has played a number of critically acclaimed roles in movies like Gorillas in the Mist, The Ice Storm, Dave, and The Year of Living Dangerously, she is best known for her appearances as Warrant Officer/Lieutenant Ellen Ripley in the blockbuster "Alien" movie franchise. Her first appearance as Ripley was in Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien. She reprised the role in three sequels, Aliens, Alien³, and Alien: Resurrection. She was nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award for portraying Ripley in Aliens. Ripley was a breakthrough role: the first female action hero. Although Ripley is tender and nurturing with a cat or a child, she is tough and aggressive with adult humans and alien monsters, and ruthless enough to blow up her own ship or a planetary colony; in the third film, she destroys herself to prevent the xenomorph species from spreading. She also starred in two films in 1988, receiving Academy Award nominations for her roles as Katherine Parker in Working Girl and as naturalist Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist. She lost to Geena Davis and Jodie Foster, respectively.

Weaver also appeared in Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II as Dana Barrett. She played the role of the agoraphobic criminal psychologist Helen Hudson in the 1995 movie Copycat, and went on to become the most highly paid actress of the 1990s. In addition to her trademark role as Ripley, Weaver has recently concentrated on smaller, more challenging roles such as 1999's A Map of the World. Despite being fifty at the time, Weaver created a stir for appearing nude in that film. Other recent work includes 2006's Snowcake. Critics have also noted her consistent performances in comedic roles, such as in Jeffrey (1994), Galaxy Quest (1999), and Heartbreakers (2001), in which she starred with Jennifer Love Hewitt.

In 1997, Weaver won the BAFTA Award for her supporting role in Ang Lee's The Ice Storm. In 2003, Weaver was voted 20th in Channel 4's countdown of the 100 greatest movie stars of all time. She was one of only two women in the top 20 (the other was Audrey Hepburn). That year, she also played The Warden in the movie Holes. In 2006, Weaver returned to Rwanda for the BBC special Gorillas Revisited.

Weaver was approached to star as the ADA in the The Accused but felt the nature of the story was too violent. Jane Campion wanted a 'Sigourney Weaver type' for her film The Piano but Weaver's agent turned the film down without consulting Weaver. Holly Hunter went on to win the Oscar for the role, and Weaver fired her agent. Bryan Singer originally wanted Sigourney for the role of Emma Frost in X-Men: The Last Stand but Singer (and screenwriter Dan Harris, who directed Weaver in Imaginary Heroes) left the project and the idea to include Frost was dropped. In 2008, Weaver signed on playing the Mom in Prayers for Bobby (TV film), supposed to air February 2009.

Weaver is notable for her stature, standing 6'.

After making Gorillas in the Mist, she became a supporter of The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and is now the DFGFI's honorary chairperson.[5] Weaver is an environmentalist.[6] In October 2006 she drew international attention through a news conference at the start of a United Nations General Assembly policy deliberation. She outlined the widespread threat to ocean habitats posed by deep-sea trawling, an industrial method for harvesting fish. She also narrated the American version of the BBC/Discovery Channel show Planet Earth, which focuses on the wonders of our world.[7][8] On April 8, 2008, she hosted the annual gala of the Trickle Up Program, a non-profit organization focusing on those in extreme poverty, mainly women and the disabled, in the Rainbow Room.