20 Questions: Sigourney Weaver

Tall, lithe, patrician and great-looking, Sigourney Weaver is a thinking man's actor on both stage and screen. She's also not above having a few laughs, whether it means being possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper in "Ghostbusters" or being chased by an evil extraterrestrial in "Alien." Weaver had just returned from nearly a year in Europe, with a sassy new hairdo and three completed films (including "Aliens"), when she met Contributing Editor David Rensin at a Viennese restaurant on New York's West Side. Afterward, says Rensin, "She told newlywed stories. The prognosis: So far, so good."

1.

[Q] Playboy: You've played bright, sensible, forthright women. In Half Moon Street, you play a woman who is a hooker on the side. Was it good to be bad for a change?

[A] Weaver: I'm always offered roles as straightforward women with integrity. Even as Lauren in Half Moon Street, I'm a callgirl with integrity. [Laughs] But I have more going on as an actor than I've been able to show, and in Half Moon Street, I could express something that was already there—though I still have a long way to go with that. None of the three films I've done this year was particularly funny, but humor is what I'm best at. The director was a fairly serious person, and so it will probably be a serious film. There aren't too many callgirl jokes in it.

2.

[Q] Playboy: What's your character's approach to sex?

[A] Weaver: It's interesting. She understands quite clearly that sex is mental. That's why she doesn't get dolled up for her dates. She just goes as herself. Sex is also other things, though Ph.D.'s are probably more mental than the rest of us. One of the reasons Lauren is good at her job is that she sizes up how to get to a person fast. Then she can arouse him mentally or physically or emotionally, depending on what she thinks would be successful. Money just makes it more interesting for her. If you have to fuck a lot of people you don't care about, at least it would help. I certainly didn't find her a perverse character in any way. If that means that I'm perverse, so be it.

3.

[Q] Playboy: Are the required nude scenes more or less of an issue to actresses these days?

[A] Weaver: I had to do a nude scene in One Woman or Two, the French film I made with Gérard Depardieu. It now seems like an invasion of those characters' privacy. In a comedy, you don't want to go into the bedroom with the characters. You want to close the door and leave them to it. But one of the reasons I did it was that it was the last day of filming and I thought, Well, I have to take off my clothes for the next film, anyway. I would have thought more about it. Nudity becomes a major issue only when actors are asked to do something that they know is artistically stupid. Also, a lot of women are misused in films. You often see them nude, but not men—unless it's a Richard Gere movie. [Laughs] As for the idea of being naked in a film—as an actor, you're naked anyway.

4.

[Q] Playboy: Is there an advantage for a leading lady in falling in love with her leading man?

[A] Weaver: I make it very clear to my character, inside me, that it's all right to fall head over heels in love. I say to that part of myself, "Go. Have fun." But the line between character and reality never gets blurred. I remember Depardieu said to me in the first couple of days of our film, "You're very much in love with your husband. Good. I'm very much in love with my wife. Now we can fall in love on screen. We can really be with each other."

5.

[Q] Playboy: What surprises you most about marriage?

[A] Weaver: It's a lot easier than I thought it would be. I expected to have to tell myself every day that I must be more unselfish. I figured living alone had made me selfish. But in my case, it was the reverse. I could really embrace the change, because I lived alone longer. I also discovered that Jim was, well ... terrific. I'll probably get in trouble, bragging in this interview, but he's so much fun. I knew this before marriage, but when your schedules are difficult and you're under a lot of pressure, you find out more quickly who people are. He's an effortlessly good companion.

He's just always there. He never seems to drop out. He's not a moody person at all. It's fun.

6.

[Q] Playboy: You did a play called Beyond Therapy, which was about two people who found each other through personal ads in The New York Review of Books. Before she got married, how might Sigourney Weaver's ad have read?

[A] Weaver: [Laughs] That's a wonderful question. Ok: "Tall, shy brunette loaded with degrees would like to meet smart, happy-go-lucky man ... in his early 70s ... [Laughs] to skate with at Wollman Rink."

7.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have a most treasured fan letter from a famous person?

[A] Weaver: I remember something that's similar. I was having trouble getting into Australia for The Year of Living Dangerously, so my agent had to write to about ten directors to get their recommendations. I never read them, but I know that people such as Robert Altman and Woody Allen and Bob Benton all sent telegrams saying nice things. I'm sure they didn't spend a lot of time thinking about it, but I was very touched that they would take the time to give me a recommendation.

8.

[Q] Playboy: What doesn't the press understand about actors?

[A] Weaver: We're all different. I read something once where Bill Hurt tried to explain about being an artist and trying to remain one. What I respect about Bill is that he's not afraid to sound like an asshole when he talks about these things. They're important. It's what we're all feeling. Actors are society's creatures. We try to pull something out of people's private places and illuminate it. We're the fire bearers. Some of the most intense affairs are between actors and characters. There's a fire in the human heart, and we jump into it with the same obsession we have with our lovers. Acting is not, as some think, an attempt not to die. We don't judge it. We just celebrate it all.

9.

[Q] Playboy: What qualities should the perfect director have?

[A] Weaver: I don't think there is such a thing. But a good director is someone who chooses people who are good at what they do and allows them to do it. Also, it's nice if a director is prepared. I was lucky this year. I worked with three who had written the scripts they were directing.

10.

[Q] Playboy: You've spent time on a kibbutz. Why?

[A] Weaver: I wanted to be Jewish. When I was in college, (concluded on page 132)Sigourney Weaver (continued from page 105) all my friends were Jewish, and they were all very funny. But there weren't really a lot of laughs on the kibbutz. People were working too hard and were too vulnerable. This was in 1970. It was a sober place and very traditional. Women did all the kitchen chores and men were out in the fields. It was much more traditional than I had had in mind. I had expected some sort of Utopian community where everyone was equal. But I was one of only ten girls—and the rest of them were there to find good, upstanding Israeli husbands. They weren't interested in changing the way the kibbutz ran. I got into a fair amount of trouble trying to do it myself. It was the most boring two months I ever spent. I discovered that Jewishness and Israeliness are different things.

11.

[Q] Playboy: What stays with you most about the making of Aliens?

[A] Weaver: Truly? The big thing was that I worked with a nine-year-old girl [Carrie Henn] for most of Aliens, and I'd never had a little friend I saw every day. She was really good company. Our relationship was one of equals, on and off the set. And I was very proud of her at the end. That relationship was probably the focus of the movie, and certainly that changed my notion of what children are about. I used to think they were just children. In fact, they're little people. You may change and grow, but you're basically who you are from early on. The experience also made the thought of having my own kids seem like more fun.

12.

[Q] Playboy: Your dad, Pat Weaver, played a crucial role in the early development of TV programing. He created The Tonight Show and the Today show, put spectaculars and Sid Caesar on the air. Do you recall a moment when the realization of his accomplishment blew you away—and not just because you're his daughter?

[A] Weaver: I remember exactly. I was at Stanford, taking a course in communications, which frankly bored me. All everyone there was interested in was films and film making. Television was considered "yuck." It wasn't exciting anymore. But my father was asked to come up and speak, and within 20 minutes, he had galvanized all those people into wanting to work in television. He reminded them of what television was originally there to do. When you hear my father, not only do you get his spark but you get moved by television's potential. And you get horrified at what's happened to an invention that started out to be such a glorious thing. It's there to wake people up and to give, as he says, the common man the uncommon experience. And now it's sort of a dead nerve. It puts people to sleep.

13.

[Q] Playboy: Why doesn't he work in television today?

[A] Weaver: Yeah. He even started cable TV 20 years ago, for goodness' sake. [Pauses] The fact that he's not in control shows that his ideas are still considered dangerous. They involve quality and taking big chances. I'm not saying that someone like Grant Tinker doesn't. He's done a very good job of pulling NBC away from what the other networks are doing. Yet I do think it's ironic that with all the awards my father receives, he still doesn't have the power. When he describes his vision and ideas, TV executives all go, "Ha, God, that's so exciting." Then they all go home and program the same old stuff. I tried to set up a series of on-camera interviews with my father, with me asking the questions. I would like to record in some form what he does as a live speaker. If he tries to write a book, he writes the way he talks, and the sentences go on for pages, you know. But when he's there just standing with his hands in his pockets, jingling his change and talking to everybody, he turns everything around.

14.

[Q] Playboy: What did you say the last time anyone suggested your success had something to do with your father's connections?

[A] Weaver: I never used to mention who my father was when I went up for a job, especially in television. The last time it happened was when I was going up for a TV series with James Brooks [Terms of Endearment, The Mary Tyler Moore Show] and Allan Burns. Brooks said, "Still riding on the old man's coattails, huh?" I flushed to the bottom of my feet. By that time, I had already achieved some success, so the statement mortified me. But it also made me laugh. Brooks didn't do it for real, but it's still something I don't want to hear when I go in for interviews.

15.

[Q] Playboy: What should a young girl learn from her mother?

[A] Weaver: To make her own mistakes.

16.

[Q] Playboy: Your family is fairly well to do. Could you play someone poor?

[A] Weaver: My father made a lot of money, but he was still on salary, so his fortunes rose and fell with the jobs he took. I never worried about where my next meal was coming from, but I didn't feel like part of the rich world. Still, one of my frustrations is having been somewhat pegged into the rich-girl role—and even if I'm not, as in Ghostbusters and Eyewitness, my characters get huge, deluxe apartments. It's not the way in which they would live. But I guess the crews need the room in which to move the camera around. Directors tend to make women in film grander than they are, anyway. They're still caught up with them as glamorous. Usually, they clean women up and make them appetizing and into their ideals, which can often be a first wife or a girl they were in love with in high school. I suspect it has happened to me. There isn't a whole lot of curiosity about normal, everyday women—which is a great loss to the public and films and to me as an actor. I want to play all kinds of women. I'm an actor. That's my job. Give me the script and I'll see what I can do with it. Don't just write me off as some Grace Kelly type. If I thought I was cut out to play only rich people, I'd be so very bored with the prospect.

17.

[Q] Playboy: You live in New York but have spent a good deal of time in Hollywood. Who gives better parties, New Yorkers or Angelenos?

[A] Weaver: I do. They're children's parties. There's usually a magician or some entertainer. I love people with specialties, such as fire-eaters. I've never given a party where people just stand around, drink and talk. I had a Halloween square dance for my birthday. I had a witch for a caller. It was glorious—all these goblins and tigers and ghosts dancing around the room, drunk, laughing, screeching, trying to follow directions—a lot of people who wouldn't normally be thrown together in such a violent manner.

18.

[Q] Playboy: What's on your bookshelf that no one would suspect is there?

[A] Weaver: I have three copies of The Dragons of Eden. I like to read about evolution. I don't know if we're evolving up or down. I've thought about developing gills and going swimming. Maybe someday.

19.

[Q] Playboy: You worked with Michael Caine in Half Moon Street. Did you get a chance to ask him, "What's it all about, Alfie?"

[A] Weaver: I should have. He works hard but secretly. You don't see it. And he wants to be home for dinner. He wants everybody else to get home for dinner.

20.

[Q] Playboy: What's better than a massage?

[A] Weaver: I've always been fond of the Tilt-a-Whirl.

"Give me the script and I'll see what I can do with it. Don't just write me off as some Grace Kelly type."