Sigourney Weaver

Sigourney Weaver (b. October 8th, 1949)
a.k.a. Susan Alexandre Weaver

Sigourney Weaves Her Spell in Map of the World
Since she made her mark playing Ripley in the 1979 sci-fi classic, Alien, Sigourney Weaver's athletic good looks and penetrating eyes have made her the thinking person's sex symbol, while her remarkable range and depth as an actress have made her a first-tier Hollywood star. In A Map of the World, an adaptation of Jane Hamilton's best selling novel, Weaver plays Alice Goodwin, a rural wife and mother who's beset by a series of tragedies that tear apart her idyllic life . Weaver talked with Barnes & Noble.com's Gregory Baird about the appeal and the challenge of the role, and her own career playing strong, and often isolated, women.

Barnes & Noble.com: Did you read the book before you took the part?

Sigourney Weaver: I did. I rushed out to get the book, which I'd heard about from a lot of friends, and I was amazed by it. I read it twice. And once I'd read the book, I wanted to be a part of the movie. The book is so beautifully written, and the character is so unconventional.

B&N.com: How much did the book influence your interpretation of the character?

SW: Quite a bit, especially for scenes like those in the hospital. I also went out to see [author] Jane Hamilton, and spent a few days with her in Wisconsin. I did a lot of research there. I hung out at the county jail for an afternoon; you pick up a lot of things that you need as an actor through osmosis. At a certain point, after reading the book and doing your homework, you feel empowered to play the character, and you have to sort of launch yourself. But certainly the book was a great companion during the shooting, because whenever I felt lonely as Alice, I would read the book. Sometimes, when we had a tough schedule, I would just read the book and it would just float me back up again. So it was great. And what's so liberating about the book is that it certainly doesn't follow any prescribed way of handling tragedy.

B&N.com: What made playing Alice so appealing to you?

SW: It's so rare that I get to play a normal woman -- as normal as Alice is, anyway -- a normal woman on Earth with children and a husband. I think I'd always wanted to play a real mother, being one myself and knowing the lunacy of that balancing act, never being able to catch up or have things in order and everything. I'm like that in real life, so it made it easy to let go of the book and go with the role. And Alice is such an incredible woman. She's so unsentimental about so many things, and she's so ironic about so many things, and she has great strengths as well as liabilities. And there is something so disarming about her character. Her unorthodoxy really was a great inspiration to me. She's out there.

B&N.com: You're known for playing strong, intelligent women. Do you look for those kinds of roles?

SW: Well, I think one of the things I do when I approach a role is try to fix those kinds of things. If my character's stupid or unbelievable to me, I'll try to fix it before I do it. I'm often watching movies where the lead character has to do something utterly preposterous. And I think, in a way, when you're hired, you owe it to the people to say, "Can we talk about this? Does this make sense? Is this really what would happen?" But I also just think that women are strong. I think they are smart. I think they're able to deal with so many things and have throughout history because they've had to protect the hearth and the kids and everything else. So I'm very inspired by women. But I love to play normal women. I certainly don't look for archetypes. I think Ripley's become one, but I've never tried to play her that way. I find it odd to stand back and analyze what I do, but if I had to, I'd say that what I really try to do is just play the hell out of each character. And when I look back I can see, for instance, there was a pattern to roles I played in '90s. I was offered a lot of isolated women, like the character in {|Copycat|}, or Paulina in Death and the Maiden. So I'm actually trying to get away from that. I thought Alice sort of had a foot in each world. She was very in touch with the earth and very earthy and very human. At the same time she was put through an experience which did cut her off from everything she knew.

B&N.com: Do you have trouble finding roles that appeal to you?

SW: I haven't, knock on wood. I'm just finishing up a comedy where I play a woman con artist and I get to play different people, including a woman named Olga who "ees wery weekid, you know, and wery charmink." So I feel like with this role that I'm finally doing what I thought I would do from the beginning, which is comedy. This film is much closer to what I did on stage in a play called Breakers. It's about a mother and daughter con artist team who go down to down to the Breakers hotel in Palm Beach to find a rich victim.

B&N.com: Who plays the daughter in the film?

SW: Jennifer Love Hewitt. And Gene Hackman plays one of our marks. It's fabulous. We have a very good group: Anne Bancroft, Ray Liotta, Jason Lee. It's a very juicy caper movie.

B&N.com: Do you have a favorite role you've played?

SW: This sounds like I'm pushing this film, but I would have to say A Map of the World was an immensely challenging and satisfying experience for me personally and professionally. It's been frustrating that the movie hasn't played as it should have across the country. And I'm hoping that the people who've read the book and are interested in the film will discover it now on video. I think it's a really good film. There's just something about it that was very satisfying to me.

September 19, 2000

Awards & Nominations