Down the corridor and around the corner, I find Sigourney Weaver<\/a> waiting in a room stuffed with cameras and recording equipment. Neatly dressed in Upper East Side chic, she manages to seem relaxed amid all this disciplined chaos.<\/p>\n I guess she is used to it by now. Weaver appeared, 16 years ago, in the first Avatar film as Dr Grace Augustine and returned, in its 2022 spin-off, Avatar: The Way of Water<\/a>, as Kiri, digitally rendered, teenage daughter to Augustine\u2019s own Na\u2019vi avatar. That character is back in Fire and Ash. (If none of this makes sense then watch the first two films again.) <\/p>\n And, of course, Weaver has form with Cameron. It is close to 40 years since she cut up the heavens for him in Aliens.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a lot of fun,\u201d she says of the current project. \u201cOn Aliens we didn\u2019t really have fun because we were really up against it. But that wasn\u2019t our fault. It was a great movie. And to have the opportunity to come back and work with Jim again and again has just been the greatest artistic present. And it was always my greatest goal to work with the same people again and again. That sounded nice and normal.\u201d<\/p>\n I guess it seems nice and normal now. But I can\u2019t imagine this is where Weaver, who still radiates the civilised ambience of an upmarket theatre actor, can have expected to end up. <\/p>\n She was born, 76 years ago, in New York city to a family with real presence in the entertainment business. Elizabeth Inglis, her English-born actor mom, had a small part in Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s The 39 Steps and was in the original theatrical staging of Patrick Hamilton\u2019s Gas Light. Pat Weaver, her dad, was president of NBC.<\/p>\n \u201cHis family came to America in 1620,\u201d she tells me. \u201cI grew up in the showbiz world. I really had no illusions about it. I knew what it was. My father called it \u2018the racket\u2019. Right? So I think that gave me an advantage over some people who think, Oh, you get your big break, and then that\u2019s it for the rest of your life. I knew that would never happen. So I think it made me more down to earth.\u201d<\/p>\n It is an unusual sort of career. Born Susan Alexandra Weaver \u2013 she took her current forename from a minor character in The Great Gatsby \u2013 the budding actor had the most respectable of respectable educations. She attended the Ethel Walker School in Connecticut before moving on to Sarah Lawrence College, Stanford and Yale, where she performed with Meryl Streep<\/a> in the first production of Stephen Sondheim\u2019s The Frogs. <\/p>\n By the mid-1970s she was on Broadway opposite Ingrid Bergman in William Somerset Maugham\u2019s The Constant Wife. The most civilised of careers beckoned. Shakespeare in the Park here. A new Tom Stoppard play there. Poetry readings at the Met. Repertory theatre. <\/p>\n Weaver did, indeed, manage to keep a toe in the theatre. As recently as last year she played Prospero in Shakespeare\u2019s The Tempest, in the West End of London. But something happened in 1979 that sent her on a different path.<\/p>\n That was, of course, Alien. Her role as the dogged Ripley in Ridley Scott<\/a>\u2019s classic science-fiction horror \u2013 horribly well designed by HR Giger \u2013 made her a star as it helped transform the perception of women in mainstream film. She can\u2019t have seen that coming. Was that a complete swivel?<\/p>\n \u201cWell, it was acting,\u201d she says with a laugh. \u201cAnd Ridley was kind enough \u2013 I was a little critical of the script, because I\u2019m an English major \u2013 to show me all the Giger designs and everything. I realised I\u2019d never seen anything like this. So I kind of felt it was a small, off-off-Broadway film. And that world I felt comfortable in.<\/p>\n \u201cEven though it was supposed to be my big break, I didn\u2019t want to think of it that way. But I was working with wonderful actors. So I didn\u2019t really think about it much.\u201d<\/p>\n One could easily image a crueller world in which Hollywood failed to make the best use of Weaver. After all, they hadn\u2019t had much experience with classically trained women taking roles traditionally allocated to the likes of Kirk Douglas or Burt Lancaster.<\/p>\n Maybe the worst scenario would be repeated typecasting as the same gun-wielding sci-fi heroine. Her pal Jamie Lee Curtis<\/a> admits that she was channelled into the scream-queen stream after early success in Halloween.<\/p>\n [\u00a0Jamie Lee Curtis: \u2018Once you mess with your face you can\u2019t get it back\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n But Weaver proved her versatility in the 1980s. She was inspiring as Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist. She was hilarious in Mike Nichols\u2019s Working Girl. So what was the secret of avoiding stereotyping?<\/p>\n \u201cI can tell you my secret,\u201d she says. \u201cThe drama school I was at was very discouraging and told me I had no talent and I\u2019d never make it in the theatre. So I was a bit daunted by that, I think. That was difficult for me. And, of course, after I did Ripley they sent me nothing but bad Ripleys. <\/p>\n \u201cSo I thought, \u2018You know what? I can do what I want to do in rep. I can do that with my career.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cAnd so that\u2019s what I\u2019ve done. I\u2019ve been genre blind. I just follow the story. And if, as the pernickety English major, it passes my questions, if it is it about something more than the people in it, then that is one way of choosing a film that has legs \u2013 that can continue to resonate for people.\u201d<\/p>\n That seems a plausible argument. You can read something like Ang Lee\u2019s film The Ice Storm, from 1997, in which she was electric as a woman caught up in the post-1960s sexual revolution, as satisfying all her criteria. But Cameron\u2019s Aliens, one of the best sequels ever made, is equally resonant in its own bellicose fashion. Her role in Ghostbusters tested other mainstream inclinations. Avatar has an inimitable epic sweep. In 2026 she enters the Star Wars universe with Jon Favreau<\/a>\u2019s The Mandalorian and Grogu. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been genre blind,\u201d she repeats. \u201cI haven\u2019t put acting first. I\u2019ve put participation in great projects first. It was never my intention to have four franchises. But here I am, and I feel very grateful.\u201d<\/p>\n Weaver has managed to maintain a steady level of well-remunerated activity over the past four decades. Meanwhile, she has forged an apparently happy home life with the stage director Jim Simpson. Married since 1984, they live quietly in Manhattan, where they were among the founders of a space called the Flea Theatre. Their only child, Shar Simpson, is an author and narrative designer. <\/p>\n All very cultured. All very sophisticated. Still, I can\u2019t help but think back to her father describing the entertainment world as \u201cthe racket\u201d. Were her parents resigned to the risks when she eventually decided to throw herself into acting?<\/p>\n \u201cI think they were,\u201d she says. \u201cI was so shy and so tall and so self-conscious for so long. I think they were really utterly amazed I was successful. And my father was always very encouraging. I think my mother was just sort of waiting for it all to end any minute. But I was very lucky. And my goal was always to work with people more than once. So, in case of James Cameron, I\u2019ve been very, very lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n It is interesting how she comes back to this. Though Cameron does have a reputation for huge, technically complicated productions, actors seem to be loyal to him. He talks their language as well as the language of pyrotechnicians and special-effects people. She gets on with him?<\/p>\n \u201cHe is very smart and he is a delightful friend and it\u2019s a great experience to continue to be friends with him,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Let us go back to that inhibition she mentioned earlier. Speaking to The Irish Times in 2016, she told<\/a> my fellow critic Tara Brady, \u201cI was much too shy to ever think that I was going to be an actor.\u201d <\/p>\n This keeps coming up in profiles. It sounds as if that had something to do with her height. Meeting Weaver at the Bristol, I can\u2019t say this is something one now notices. (Then again, we often expect actors to be taller than they prove to be.) But I suppose there once were concerns about a female actor brushing the 6ft marker.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, the good thing was they wouldn\u2019t cast me in certain roles,\u201d she says with a laugh. \u201cI\u2019d come in into a room in a studio in Hollywood and all the men would sit down: producers, directors, actors. Because they didn\u2019t know what to do with me. They didn\u2019t know what to do with a tall woman who spoke her mind.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt for a long time it took a kind of mad director to hire me \u2013 someone unconventional. It threw me into contact with a lot of people who weren\u2019t conventional directors and writers. And I feel like that was where I wanted to be anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n She has an enormously gentle and friendly presence. But, later, when she enters the Salon Versailles, at the Bristol, alongside Cameron and her Avatar costars Sam Worthington and Zo\u00eb Salda\u00f1a<\/a>, you have the sense of an old-school star occupying all of whatever space she encounters. Like Bette Davis. Like Joan Crawford. Like Barbara Stanwyck. <\/p>\n But, in some ways, she has it better than them. Those great stars struggled to find decent roles once they passed their mid-40s. She can tell me I\u2019m wrong, but I think that\u2019s one area of Hollywood where things have improved for women.<\/p>\n \u201cI think you\u2019re right,\u201d she says. \u201cIf there was an older woman\u2019s part it was usually a caricature. It took the movie studios a long time to admit it wasn\u2019t all about male, white, 18-through-21. <\/p>\n \u201cSo I am here at a very lucky time. I think the studios recognise that there\u2019s a great appetite to see people all across the age spectrums and every spectrum, and see human stories that they can relate to.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Melanie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/45QS7DOPIJEEBBEX242AGLE7AY.jpg\")
Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford and Sigourney Weaver on the set of Working Girl. Photograph: Sunset Boulevard\/Corbis via Getty <\/p>\n![\"Rick](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/F3G2KSNMBFDCZFJW2D67CIRIIA.jpg\")
Rick Moranis and Sigourney Weaver in Ghostbusters, 1984. Photograph: Columbia Pictures\/Getty <\/p>\n![\"Sigourney](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/7EQSAIYWUBBMBOBWH2JFJHRBUU.jpg\")
Sigourney Weaver and Carrie Henn on the set of Aliens, directed by James Cameron. Photograph: Bob Penn\/Sygma\/Sygma via Getty <\/p>\n![\"James](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/P6KL7PZ6HFBBDKQAQ3WZZNBSJQ.jpg\")
James Cameron, Trinity Bliss, Britain Dalton, Jack Champion and Sigourney Weaver on the set of Avatar: Fire and Ash. Photograph: Mark Fellman <\/p>\n![\"Kiri](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/3IU6ABBKIBASHOYTQJF7ZFCV6A.jpg\")
Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) in Avatar: Fire and Ash. Photograph: 20th Century Studios <\/p>\n