Sigourney Weaver

Biography

A question: how do you reach the Hollywood A-list when you're a woman, and Meryl Streep is getting offered all the best roles? What if you're charismatic, freethinking, well-read, extremely intelligent and six feet tall, and thus tower over the male lead in every department? What if you consider yourself to be a serious stage actress and don't think much of movies anyway? How DO you pull it off? Well, you could do it the Sigourney Weaver way, become the only bankable female action hero in franchise history and make hundreds of millions for the studios, thereby allowing yourself to do pretty much as you please. That's what Weaver did as Lt Ellen Ripley in the Alien series, a series that, over 20 years, has financed her extraordinary creative growth.

She was born Susan Alexandra Weaver on the 8th of October, 1949, in New York. Her father, Sylvester "Pat" Weaver, had been a lieutenant in the US Navy during WW2 then, on his return, set about building a TV empire for NBC, being its president between 1953 and '55. It was Pat who created both the Today and Tonight programmes, pioneering the desk'n'couch chat show format popular to this day. Along with his British actress wife, Elizabeth Inglis (born Desiree, credited in many 30s and 40s movies as Elizabeth Earl), he also built a family. First came a son, Trajan - Pat having an abiding interest in the Roman Empire - then a daughter, named Susan after Elizabeth's best friend back home, Susan Pretzlik, a renowned explorer (though Pat preferred Flavia).

Young Susan grew up wealthy on the Upper East Side, surrounded by nannies and maids. The family lived in 30 different locations in her first 10 years. She remembers each by the elevator men who became her best friends. Susan was a bright kid, and a big reader, having devoured the likes of Moby Dick and Suddenly Last Summer by grade school. She wasn't ones for dollies - TV studios were her playpen - making her very mature, and distant from other kids. She attended the Brearly Girls Academy, then Chapin where, mocked for her height and gangling gait, she became the class clown.