LWould Sigourney Weaver’s success be a big story? In any case, this is what the interested party puts forward in Style heroine, the documentary dedicated to him by Arte. A documentary in which the one who played Lieutenant Ellen Ripley from the science fiction saga Alien returns, for almost an hour, to the roots of his own triumph.
A success that the actress readily puts down to her impressive 1.82 meter height. “I think my tallness prevented me from making conventional films, with conventional directors,” she explains in one of the first sequences of the film.
It is from this particularity, which she admits to having never been self-conscious, that the American actress will start to tell her story. A strong physical presence on screen which, over the course of his roles, will allow him to hold his own against his male counterparts. However, everything has not always been so simple for the woman who, outside of film sets, often appears shy in interviews.
The star in fact trades his confidence in front of the camera of Hollywood directors for a certain introversion in front of that of television “talk shows”. And reveals himself as a binary being, capable of the greatest of strengths as well as the most disconcerting of vulnerabilities, right down to his androgynous looks, which for years earned him the mockery of fashion commentators.
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From mother hen to primatologist
This duality, the director of the documentary, Bärbel Merseburger-Sill, also demonstrates it through the career choices of Sigourney Weaver, sometimes the host body of a demonic spirit in the first Ghostbusters (1984), sometimes mother hen in its sequel, five years later.
A spectrum of skills so broad that it made the actress the first personality to win two acting awards at the Golden Globes in the same year, in 1988: that of best supporting actress in comedy. Working Girl (alongside Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford), and that of best actress in a dramatic film for Gorillas in the mist, in which she played primatologist Dian Fossey. Excuse me a little.
But with Ripley’s interpreter, no pretense. Sigourney Weaver, whose real name is Susan Alexandra, always plays the transparency card. She explains, for example, that she doesn’t like guns and that she hated using them in Aliens, the return (1986) by James Cameron.
“What was I doing in that movie?” “, she even has fun looking at an archive image. She also admits to having joined the jury of the Cannes Film Festival in 1998, having only watched “only Disney for several years”, recent maternity requires.
Intimate without voyeurism
The septuagenarian often underestimates her own career, about which she has so much to tell. Anecdotes which, when they are not told by the actress herself, are told by the French producer Dominique Besnehard – with whom she worked on the series Ten percent (2015-2020). Fortunately, not everything has been revealed to you in this article.
And there will be plenty of other things to get your teeth into for the brave few who will stay up until 11 p.m. on Wednesday June 5 to watch the documentary live on Arte; but also for all the others who will benefit from the replay the following days.
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From this pleasant immersion in the CV of a cinema giant, we will therefore remember her ease in being intimate without resorting to voyeurism. However, we regret the too few speakers in the final montage. Perhaps the appearance of one of the Hollywood freaks she worked with would have been appropriate. James Cameron, Ridley Scott, where are you?
Sigourney Weaver should return to action next year in the role of Kiri for the third part of the saga Avatarabout which we still know nothing at the moment.
Sigourney Weaver – Style Heroine, directed by Bärbel Merseburger-Sill, Wednesday June 5 at 11 p.m. on Arte.
