Sigourney Weaver convinced she avoided Hollywood abuse as she was nearly 30 when she found fame: ‘I managed to avoid the vulnerable time!’
After shooting to global fame in 1979 after shooting ‘Alien’ as she headed for her 30th birthday, Sigourney Weaver says not being a young actress allowed her to avoid being abused in Hollywood decades before the Me Too movement,
Sigourney Weaver believes she avoided Hollywood abuse as she was nearly 30 when she found fame.
The ‘Alien’ actress, 73, is about to be seen in Amazon Prime’s seven-part series ‘The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart’, adapted from Holly Ringland’s book of the same name, and which tells how a group of women come together to heal from grief, domestic abuse and trauma through the language of flowers.
Sigourney told the Sunday Times when asked how she avoided the rampant “abuse” in the film business before the Me Too movement: “By the time I was famous I was 28, so I managed to avoid the vulnerable time.”
“I think that ‘Lost Flowers’ coming in the wake of #MeToo has even more relevance and power.
“I was very grateful to do a project that focuses on domestic abuse. Statistics in the US are terrible because we have all these guns and so many domestic incidents involve guns.”
Sigourney also told how she has spent years working in human rights, particularly on women’s issues.
She plays matriarch June Hart I ‘Lost Flowers’, which she shot in four months in Australia during Covid.
Her husband of 38 years, the theatre director Jim Simpson, has been by her side throughout her long career, with the couple marrying in 1984 five years after the release of ‘Alien’.
Sigourney previously told The Hollywood Reporter: “What has been accomplished with #MeToo is such an important step in the battle for equality in the workplace.
“I think actually nowadays, women, in my opinion, do try to help each other. There’s a greater sense of sisterhood.
“When I was in college we really thought we would get equality in the constitution. We’re still waiting!”
The three-time Academy Award nominated actress added: “What we’re against is the abuse of power… sexual exploitation towards people who are more vulnerable.
“It’s very clear for us in America, except for a few holdouts.”
She also said she was “very lucky” to have started out acting in the theatre as it meant she was “working with mostly gay playwrights that I knew from drama school, and gay producers, so no one was interested in me”.
Sigourney added: “Then I made ‘Alien’, which was basically my first film, and no one came near me.
“They were so afraid I’d yank out a flamethrower, and I think I was already too old for them to take advantage of me.”
