Susan Alexandra Weaver was born on the 8th of October in 1949 and raised in New York City, where she went to high school with Meryl Streep. She and her brother Trajan were born into a minor showbiz royalty; her father Sylvester “Pat” Weaver was an ex-NBC president and his wife Elizabeth Inglis was a former Hitchcockian actress. When a young Susan, already with a flare for the dramatic, read The Great Gatsby at the age fourteen, she fell in love with one character’s name and from then on wanted to be known as “Sigourney.”
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Sigourney went on to receive a Bachelor’s Degree in English at Stanford University, and then with a hectic case of the acting bug, went to Yale University’s prestigious School of Drama. The six-foot actress took on some parts on the stage before landing the lead in the 1976 film, Madman and a bit part in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (she portrayed Woody’s date at the end of the film).
However, in 1979, she landed the part that would launch her career as a star; after only one audition, she landed the role of Lt. Ellen Ripley in Ridley Scott’s groundbreaking Alien (the role that she would of course revisit after earning an Academy Award nomination in James Cameron’s classic 1986 flick Aliens, as she did in the two horrible sequels).
She went on to land such roles as 1981’s Eyewitness with William Hurt and The Year of Living Dangerously with Mel Gibson. In 1984, she married her husband Jim Simpson and co-starred in the comic sci-fi masterpiece Ghostbusters, opposite Bill Murray, which proved to be a blockbuster and officially gave Sigourney the title of superstar.
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After gathering her first Oscar nomination for Aliens in 1986, she earned two nominations in 1988 for Best Supporting Actress in Working Girl and Best Actress in Gorillas in the Mist; she never brought home Oscar, she did have two Golden Globes to add to her mantle.
Although she hasn’t received any Oscar nominations since, she has remained a force in Hollywood, which was proved with successful films like 1993’s Dave, 1999’s campy comedy, Galaxy Quest, and 2001’s Heartbreakers, in which she held her own despite co-star Jennifer Love Hewitt.
You can look for her in the 2002 feature film Tadpole and 2003’s The Wedding Contract, which will re-team her with her Ghostbusters co-star Bill Murray.