Sigourney Weaver

Weaver has been married to stage director Jim Simpson since October 1, 1984. The couple have one child, Charlotte Simpson.

Weaver and Simpson co-founded the Flea Theater in New York City in 1996. The theater was established as an Off-Off-Broadway venue that supported young artists and new work.

Weaver was born in New York City to English actress Elizabeth Inglis and American television executive Sylvester "Pat" Weaver, who served as president of NBC from 1953 to 1955. Her uncle, Doodles Weaver, was a comedian and actor. At age 14, she began using the name Sigourney after a minor character in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

She attended schools in Manhattan and Connecticut before studying at Sarah Lawrence College and transferring to Stanford University. She graduated from Stanford with a degree in English in 1972, then earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Yale School of Drama in 1974. At Stanford and Yale, she performed in theatrical productions and developed important creative relationships with playwright Christopher Durang and other theater artists.

After Yale, Weaver focused on stage work, appearing in plays including Durang's Titanic and Das Lusitania Songspiel, which she co-wrote with Durang. She made her Broadway debut in The Constant Wife in 1974 and had a brief, non-speaking appearance in Woody Allen's Annie Hall in 1977.

Weaver's breakthrough came with Ridley Scott's science-fiction horror film Alien (1979), in which she played Ellen Ripley, a warrant officer aboard a commercial spaceship. The role was originally written for a man and established Weaver as a major film star. She returned as Ripley in James Cameron's Aliens (1986), David Fincher's Alien 3 (1992), and Alien: Resurrection (1997), earning an Academy Award nomination for Aliens.

In the 1980s, Weaver expanded into comedy and drama. She played Dana Barrett in Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989), appearing alongside Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd. She also starred opposite Mel Gibson in The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) and appeared in Mike Nichols's Working Girl (1988) as corporate executive Katharine Parker.

Weaver received two Academy Award nominations in 1988, for her performances in Gorillas in the Mist and Working Girl. She won two Golden Globe Awards for the films in the same year, becoming the first actor to win two acting Golden Globes in one year. Her performance as primatologist Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist also led to her long-term support for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

Weaver continued to work in a wide range of genres during the 1990s and 2000s. Her films included Dave (1993), Death and the Maiden (1994), Copycat (1995), The Ice Storm (1997), Galaxy Quest (1999), Heartbreakers (2001), Holes (2003), The Village (2004), and A Monster Calls (2016). For The Ice Storm, she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

She reunited with James Cameron for Avatar (2009), playing Dr. Grace Augustine, the leader of the Avatar program on Pandora. In Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) and Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025), she played Kiri, a young Na'vi character, while also reprising the role of Grace Augustine. Weaver was assisted by performance technology and computer-generated imagery in portraying Kiri.

Her other later film work includes The Cabin in the Woods (2011), Chappie (2015), Finding Dory (2016), The Meyerowitz Stories (2017), Call Jane (2022), and The Good House (2021), in which she reunited with Kevin Kline. She also played Colonel Ward in The Mandalorian and Grogu.

Weaver received Emmy Award nominations for Snow White: A Tale of Terror, Prayers for Bobby, Political Animals, and for narrating the documentary series Secrets of the Whales. In Political Animals (2012), she played Elaine Barrish, a former first lady and secretary of state. She later appeared in the Marvel miniseries The Defenders and the Australian miniseries The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, which she also executive-produced.

Her voice work includes the female Planet Express Ship in Futurama, the ship's computer in Pixar's WALL-E, the narrator of The Tale of Despereaux, and a cameo as herself in Finding Dory. She also narrated the American version of the documentary series Planet Earth.

Weaver has maintained a stage career alongside her film and television work. Her Broadway credits include Hurlyburly, which earned her a Tony Award nomination, and Christopher Durang's Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, which won the Tony Award for Best Play. She made her West End debut as Prospero in a 2024-2025 revival of Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Weaver's honors include two Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Grammy Award, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Donostia Award from the San Sebastián International Film Festival, the International Goya Award, and the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement from the Venice International Film Festival. Her acting has also brought three Academy Award nominations, four Primetime Emmy Award nominations, and a Tony Award nomination.

After portraying Dian Fossey, Weaver became an honorary chairperson of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and was honored by the Explorers Club for her conservation work. She has also addressed threats to ocean habitats from deep-sea trawling at a United Nations policy conference and hosted a gala for the Trickle Up Program, which supports people living in extreme poverty.