EXCLUSIVE : Two years ago, Sigourney Weaver handed the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to the filmmaker Paul Schrader. As she explains to us in a rare sit-down, she didn’t imagine that two years later she would be receiving the same accolade. Looking over her career is to be quickly reminded that there are few actresses working today who are more deserving.
Between Alien , Ghostbuster s and Avatar , Weaver has left an indelible mark on some of cinema’s most iconic sci-fi franchises. As Ellen Ripley, she represented a heroine unprecedented in the action and sci-fi genre up to that point. But the three-time Oscar nominee is perhaps most worthy of the Venice award she will receive at the festival Wednesday for her remarkable range, and her ability in the words of Venice festival director Alberto Barbera to “side-step labels that sought to restrict her”: “She constantly challenged her persona through choices that ranged from genre movies to comedies, art-house films to children’s movies.
..” The New Yorker becomes only the third American actress ever to receive Venice’s career award after Jane Fonda and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Despite coming from a family with showbiz connections — her mother was an actress and her father was American TV exec and former NBC -resident Pat Weaver — Sigourney’s ascent wasn’t a given. Her teachers at Yale described her as “talentless” and advised that she stick to comedy. However, as we discuss below.