Sigourney Weaver

Season 6, Episode 610

Original Airdate: October 29, 2000

The daughter of the former head of the NBC network, Sigourney Weaver changed her name from Susan after reading The Great Gatsby.

She graduated from the Yale Drama School one year before Meryl Streep and cut her teeth working on the New York stage for the New York Shakespeare Festival and a long run Off-Broadway in Gemini. Like Streep, her early film roles included a Woody Allen film, with a non-speaking role in Annie Hall (1977).

She hit the Hollywood A-list in the early 1980s as the tough but rational Lieutenant Ripley in Ridley Scott's sci-fi hit Alien (1979). She has thus far reprised that role three times in Aliens (1986), Alien3 (1992) and Alien Resurrection (1997).

She next tackled starring roles in Peter Wier's The Year Of Living Dangerously (1983), and Ivan Reitman's hit comedy Ghostbusters (1984). She has been nominated three times for Academy Awards: Aliens in 1986, and twice in 1988 alone for Working Girl and Gorillas In The Mist.

In the 1990s she re-teamed with directors Scott and Reitman. She appeared as Queen Isabella of Spain in Scott's Christopher Columbus film, 1492: Conquest Of Paradise (1992). She worked with Reitman on Ghostbusters II (1989) and played the First Lady in the presidential comedy Dave (1993).

Weaver has been able to shine in any genre, be it serious drama, action or comedy. More recent films include the film adaptation of Death And The Maiden (1994) for Roman Polanski, The Ice Storm (1997) for Ang Lee and the 1999 space spoof Galaxy Quest.