Sigourney Weaver on her unpredictable career

2022 is shaping up to be a very good year for   actor Sigourney Weaver yet another  Stellar chapter in a storied career you are such a city girl and look at you out  here well I think that's why I like it so much   you know we in the city need to come and get  our hands dirty and smell the soil and it's   very inspiring at the New York Botanical Garden in  the Bronx lifelong manhattanite Sigourney Weaver   is in her element are you harvesting yeah you want  taste sure well yeah yummy Botanical Garden grown   oh it's delicious really good so pretty  right they say that with a garden you   plant the garden first year it sleeps second  year it creeps 30 year it leaps good looking   but there's never been a year like this one for  72 year old Sigourney Weaver four movies in the   next four months I usually have something  simmering and so it looks like I threw   some magic beans out the window and they all  suddenly went like that cuddling with gorillas three-time Oscar nominee is a commanding  presence in power suits hi I'm Catherine   Parker you must be tess and iconic in space suits one of the first badass heroines in space   get away from her you bitch warrant  officer Ellen Ripley in the Alien franchise is how Sigourney Weaver made her name though  she was born Susan Weaver Sigourney was   the name she took for herself from the  novel The Great Gatsby when she was 13.   I had great trouble saying at the height of  six feet my name is Sue so small and I just   saw this name and I went oh I love that it goes  on that's fantastic I like the look of it three   syllables I thought I'm going to use that until I  can figure out what name I'd really like because   I'm not going to use crazy name like Sigourney  it was absolutely a placeholder my pretend name   was Gisele and you went with Sigourney and that  wasn't a stage name no we had both had parents   who were not expecting the careers that we went on  to have did your parents think you could act I'm   sure they didn't her English mother had a career  on stage and film in the '30s and '40s her father   was a Pioneer in television in the '50s Sylvester  Weaver created both Today and The Tonight Show I   think that they were horrified that I was going to  take this on my father thought it was good to go   to drama school that would probably shake this  goal right out of me and it almost did Weaver   attended the Yale School of Drama I didn't really  belong there I wish I'd gone to like Second City   or something she felt like a fish out of water  and the faculty seemed to agree they were not   supportive explicitly so yeah I have to say they  could not have been meaner and the irony was that   they were fired when I graduated so the lesson  to me is don't believe what your teachers tell   you deflated but undeterred she returned to New  York City with a new attitude what did she have   to lose? when I went to an audition I was just  trying to inhabit that character for a few minutes   just to be able to work and I wasn't trying to you  know get somewhere because I I figured I wouldn't   so I just thought I'm going to just do my thing  after four years on stage off-off-Broadway her   first film appearance was a small non-speaking  role in Annie Hall followed barely two years   later by the Ridley Scott blockbuster Alien  I got really lucky you sort of came out of   nowhere so totally how on Earth did that no  Miracle happen I remember thinking that science   fiction it doesn't matter what I do I wore these  very high hooker boots that made me about seven   feet tall I stalked into that meeting Ridley  asked me what I thought of the script and we   just started to talk and I could see the casting  person in the background who was kind of going   like you know he doesn't really want to know what  you think dear a superstar had arrived but she   didn't play the part it certainly didn't make me  want to have a film career which is ironic because   I was in a very good position so I didn't really  do anything for a couple of years I went back   to the theater and I I just felt I really wanted  to learn my craft now in the fifth decade of her   career the long-awaited sequel to The Box Office  record setting Avatar arrives in December but in   the coming weeks she'll be seen in Master Gardener  you think you can run around the backyard in the   middle of the night paying a little visit to this  one here no no it's not that stop what Call Jane   a timely and provocative film about abortion set  in pre-Roe 1960s you're going to rest for a few   hours which one of you is Jane we're all Jane and  out this week the good house with Kevin Klein she   plays a recovering alcoholic Hildy would you like  to have a seat Well if we're really going to do   this I need a drink oh my God I'm kidding here's  this woman who was at the top of her game who's   sort of slipping and then she's fighting against  ageism her assistant's stolen all her clients and   she's being pushed off her perch and she decides  to fire back and fight back you know how many   projects are there where an older woman gets to  do any of that like none with more than 60 film   credits and still counting Sigourney Weaver seems  to have found her place and at her own steady pace   and that's the secret of Hollywood longevity I  think I was very lucky because I wasn't a babe   but I could play a babe I wasn't this but I could  play that so I would always just pick the story   and not the role and I thought is this a story  I want to see is this a story about something   I really believe in it has cumulatively shown  a lot of different fun things that I got to do   the ladies got got range well that's I think  for me the greatest compliment so thank you

Channel: CBS Sunday Morning

Views: 220,054

Keywords: CBS Sunday Morning, CBS News, news, sigourney weaver, career, film, academy award nominee, jane pauley, yale, school of drama, alien, hollywood

Id: t-9WKezLyiE

Length: 7min 29sec (449 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 25 2022