Sigourney Weaver, having been directed by James Cameron in Aliens (1986), sequel to Alien (1979) by Ridley Scott, agreed to act in Avatar (2009). She accepted Cameron’s invitation to play a different character, the teenage girl Kiri, in the sequels Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) and Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025).
She explained: “When you are 14, even though life is complicated, you’re still a joyous creature, and despite the strain of the battle, the fact that we won, the sadness of losing her brother Neteyam is weighing heavily on Kiri.”
I interviewed this amazing actress several times in my long career as an entertainment journalist.
In 1983 with Mel Gibson about The Year of Living Dangerously by Peter Weir.
In 1986 about Aliens. My interview was published in the Italian weekly Domenica del Corriere.
In 1988, about Gorillas in the Mist by Michael Apted, my interview was published in the Italian fashion weekly Gioia.
In 2021, after the passing of Michael Apted, I wrote what he said about Gorillas in the Mist during an exclusive interview with the journalists of the Hollywood Foreign Press for my weekly column of archival quotes on the Golden Globes website. Click here to read
I followed up with another column on what Sigourney Weaver said about playing Dian Fossey. Click here to read.
In 1992, I wrote an interview with Sigourney Weaver for Marie Claire Italy about Alien 3 directed by David Fincher
In 1996, I wrote an interview with Weaver for Donna Moderna about Copycat by Jon Amiel.
In 2001, also for Donna Moderna I wrote an interview with Weaver about Heartbreakers, a delicious comedy where she co-starred with Gene Hackman.
In 2021, I highlighted a moment in 1989 when Sigourney Weaver won a Golden Globe as Best Actress in a 3-way tie, then won a second Globe as Best Supporting Actress for Working Girl by Mike Nichols. See it here.
In 2023, I wrote an article for the Golden Globes website about Call Jane where Sigourney Weaver played a feminist mentor.
My intro: “Many women rightly feared that, after the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States in 2016, aided by a Republican majority in the Senate, he would appoint conservative judges to the Supreme Court, whose goal would be to curtail women’s freedom of choice. This is exactly what happened, on June 24, 2022, when the constitutional right to abortion, guaranteed by the Roe v. Wade since 1973, was overturned by the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, leaving legislation regulating abortion up to the individual states rather than the federal government.”
The reason why I decided to feature Sigourney Weaver now is because she has been outspoken in her support for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Presidential elections, and in 2024 for Kamala Harris.
Watch here her July 27, 2016 speech at the Democratic Party National Convention about Donald Trump’s views on climate change.
On August 28, 2024, when she received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Venice Film Festival, she praised Kamala and women who are strong and don’t give up. Read here the article I wrote for my Village Blog to celebrate this moment.
Editing my more than twenty interviews with this amazing actress, while working on my archives, I noticed the consistency of her political views.
In December 2004, after George W. Bush was elected President a second time, she said to HFPA journalists:
“As you get older, you’re still protesting the Vietnam War; and now there’s another war (Iraq). I look at the men in this country who don’t want to have a woman President or to pay women the same salaries as the men get, and I understand it, it’s like the survival of the species. One of the reasons that our voting process is so difficult, that it’s hard to get people out to vote is that both parties have underfunded education for the last 20 or 30 years, and we’re seeing the results now. We really need to start talking to each other, the two sides, red and blue, we need to make some purple.”
In 2012, in the TV miniseries Political Animals, Sigourney Weaver played a former First Lady who divorced her cheating husband, was elected Governor of Illinois, lost her bid to be the Presidential candidate for the Democratic party, the male candidate who won appointed her as Secretary of State.
During our HFPA interview, Weaver claimed that she was not playing Hillary Clinton, whom she had never yet met, but that series creator Greg Berlanti had Madeleine Albright in mind.
“I’m playing a very accomplished stateswoman, I also am a mother dealing with very complicated situations. I took it for granted, just like everybody, that we would eventually have a woman president. One of the reasons we all wanted to do this show was to try to move that dialogue further and investigate some of the reasons why Americans, men and women, aren’t willing to see how capable women are. It’s an odd thing, I don’t really understand it.”
“I’m a big Obama supporter. I’m confident that he’s going to win and that he will use his second term not to define policy but to take action, because initially he didn’t understand how badly we need him to take the reins and go. And then I hope Hillary will run and win and have one more term.”