Sigourney Weaver will receive the honorary Golden Lion in Venice

Sigourney Weaver (New York, 74 years old) is still going strong. Months after receiving the International Goya at the Spanish film awards gala, the American actress will be awarded the honorary Golden Lion at the 81st Venice Film Festival. This was announced on Friday by the organizers of the event, which will begin on August 28.

The actress of classics such as ‘Gorillas in the Mist’ or the ‘Alien’ saga claims to be “truly honored” by the award. «Receiving this award is a privilege that I share with all the directors and collaborators with whom I have collaborated, with whom I have worked over the years. “I proudly accept this award,” the three-time Oscar-nominated performer, winner of the Bafta, the Golden Globe and the Donostia Award at the San Sebastián Film Festival, thanked in a statement.

For his part, the director of the Mostra, Alberto Barbera, said that an actress of her calibre “has few rivals”, something that in his opinion is made clear by her “important theatrical training”, her versatility and an extensive career in which she has given voice to strong and powerful female characters. “She soon became an emblematic figure of the eighties, when she acquired the image of an unprecedented heroine in the action genre, capable of victoriously resisting the duel with male models who until then had dominated epic and adventure films,” said Barbera.

The director of the contest also highlighted that he “opened other paths” in his “incessant search for identity.” Paths that led him to auteur cinema, to comedy, with exponents such as ‘Ghostbusters’, ‘Heroes Out of Orbit’ or ‘The Seductresses’, or to children’s, “fleeing from labels.” “The honorary Golden Lion is due recognition to a star who has known how to build bridges between the most sophisticated auteur cinema and films that dialogue with the public in a less rigid and original way, without giving up himself,” he explained.

Her tiny debut in ‘Annie Hall’

Intelligent, sophisticated and tall, Susan Alexandra Weaver decided to change her name to a character from ‘The Great Gatsby’ to reign in the commercial cinema of the eighties and nineties. The truth is that her charisma came from her birth. Born in Manhattan in 1949, her father was a powerful television producer and her mother was an English actress who sacrificed her career to care for her family. At the age of ten, little Ella had already lived in thirty different houses, surrounded by maids and nannies.

She studied English Literature at Stanford and Dramatic Arts at Yale and made her big screen debut in 1977 in ‘Annie Hall’. She appeared in the scene for six seconds and it was because Woody Allen took pity on her, since although the filmmaker had chosen her for the role of Pam, he finally replaced her with Shelley Duvall. Two years later, Weaver would become one of the great celluloid heroines when she played Lieutenant Ripley in Ridley Scott’s ‘Alien’. Although her character seemed like a secondary character destined to die at the first opportunity, surprisingly she ended up facing the alien creature in her underwear. An iconic image in the history of cinema.

Seven years later, Ripley appeared in ‘Aliens’ as a rude and bitter soldier, who had made hunting the bug the reason for her life. And she would revive 200 years after her death in ‘Alien: Resurrection’, where she sported a shaved head, to continue fighting for the fourth and last time. Weaver’s other two blockbusters also belong to the fantasy genre. In 1984 she starred in ‘Ghostbusters’, which five years later had a sequel. She also participated with small cameos in the ‘reboot’ with a female cast and in ‘Ghostbusters: Beyond’, although it seems that she will not be in the next installment of the franchise. But for sequels those of James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’, a franchise to which she returned last year with ‘The Sense of Water’ and in which she will remain as Dr. Grace at least until the fifth installment, whose premiere is scheduled for 2031.

Endowed with a sensual and deep voice that animated cinema has exploited (‘Wall-e’, ‘Finding Dory’), Weaver has been nominated three times for an Oscar, twice for best actress for the roles of Lieutenant Ripley in ‘Aliens’ and primatologist Dian Fossey in ‘Gorillas in the Mist’, and a third for best supporting actress for her unscrupulous executive in Mike Nichols’ comedy ‘Working Girl’. By the way, for this film she won the Golden Globe for best supporting actress at the same gala in which she won the award for best leading actress for ‘Gorillas in the Mist’, both released the same year, 1988.

Undisputed versatility and talent

Her eclectic work reflects her versatility, charisma and talent. From dramas such as ‘The Good House’, ‘Dreams of an Author in New York’, ‘The Year of Living Dangerously’ and ‘The Ice Storm’, for which she won the Bafta, to stories such as ‘The Master Gardener’, ‘The Village’, ‘Death and the Maiden’ and ‘Copycat’. The actress has also worked with two Spanish directors. First with JA Bayona, with whom she filmed ‘A Monster Calls’, a role for which she was nominated for the Goya for best supporting actress – it was precisely Bayona who gave her the International Goya this year – then with Rodrigo Cortés in ‘Red Lights’.

In the past decade, she has appeared on television in such series as Prayers for Bobby, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, Call My Agent! and Political Animals, in which she played U.S. Secretary of State. Weaver has been married to director Jim Simpson since 1984 and they have a 33-year-old daughter. She still lives on the Upper East Side, far from Hollywood, and practices karate.