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Quick Facts
- NAME: Sigourney Weaver
- OCCUPATION: Film Actress
- BIRTH DATE: October 08, 1949 (Age: 63)
- EDUCATION: Stanford University, Yale Drama School
- PLACE OF BIRTH: New York, New York
- Full Name: Susan Alexandra Weaver
- AKA: Susan Weaver
- AKA: Sigourney Weaver
- ZODIAC SIGN: Libra
Best Known For
Actress Sigourney Weaver is best known for her roles in films since the 1980s, including Ghost Busters, Working Girl and Alien.
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Play NowSigourney Weaver. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 03:13, May 24, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/sigourney-weaver-17179376.
Sigourney Weaver. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/sigourney-weaver-17179376 [Accessed 24 May 2013].
"Sigourney Weaver." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 24 2013, 03:13 http://www.biography.com/people/sigourney-weaver-17179376.
"Sigourney Weaver," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/sigourney-weaver-17179376 [accessed May 24, 2013].
"Sigourney Weaver," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/sigourney-weaver-17179376 (accessed May 24, 2013).
Sigourney Weaver [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 24] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/sigourney-weaver-17179376.
Sigourney Weaver, http://www.biography.com/people/sigourney-weaver-17179376 (last visited May 24, 2013).
Sigourney Weaver. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/sigourney-weaver-17179376. Accessed May 24, 2013.
Synopsis
Sigourney Weaver was born in New York City to a show business background. Her mother was an English actress and her father was president of NBC. THough self conscious about her height and looks, Weaver acted in off-Broadway shows, and had her big break in the 1979 film Alien. Weaver appeared in many films throughout the next three decades, including Ghost Busters, Working Girl, Aliens and Avatar. Weaver has been nominated for three Academy Awards.
Early Life
Susan Alexandra Weaver was born on October 8, 1949, in New York City, and began calling herself Sigourney at the age of 14, after discovering the name in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. The daughter of English actress Elizabeth Inglis and former NBC president Sylvester Weaver, Weaver grew up fully immersed in the entertainment business.
Despite a privileged childhood, Weaver's formative years weren't always easy. She lacked confidence in her own beauty, a trait brought on by the fact that she was generally taller than most girls she knew and by her mom, who told her at the age of 8 that she was simply "plain" looking. "I thought, well, if my mother doesn't think I'm pretty ... no one else will," Weaver once said.
At age 13, Weaver was sent to see a psychiatrist to address what her parents perceived to be their daughter's uncommunicative personality. "I never even spoke to the psychiatrist," Weaver recalled. "I was a normal teenager, and teenagers hate telling their parents anything."
After private high school in Connecticut, Weaver attended California's Stanford University. It was there that she realized her true dream was to become an actress. After graduating from Stanford with a Bachelor of Arts degree in literature in 1971, Weaver moved back east to Connecticut to attend Yale Drama School. She finished the program in 1974, one year before another actress and new friend, Meryl Streep.
Career Breakthoughs
Over the next several years, Sigourney Weaver found steady work in a host of off-Broadway shows. She also landed a role on the short-lived soap, Somerset, and earned a small part as Woody Allen's movie date in the now-classic film Annie Hall (1977).
But it was her performance as the tough Ripley in the 1979 megahit Alien that catapulted Weaver to stardom and offered her a lineup of other film work to choose from. Over the next decade she starred in a host of well-received films, including The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) with Mel Gibson and the wildly popular comedy Ghost Busters (1984).
In 1986, Weaver reprised her Ripley role for the Alien sequel, Aliens, which garnered the star an Academy Award nomination for best actress. Two years later, Weaver garnered two more Oscar nominations—in the best actress category for her performance in Gorillas in the Mist, and in the best supporting actress category for her portrayal of Katharine Parker in the film Working Girl (both released in 1988).
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