2024-02-06 10:26:15
It is the third International Goya awarded by the Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences of Spain and also the third that goes to a woman. After the prestigious megastar Cate Blanchett and the banner of French and auteur cinema that is Juliette Binochethe award that aspires to place Spain in the league of European awards with pretensions of transcending its own borders returns to the Anglo-Saxon terrain and to the makings of the most demanding Hollywood. Sigourney Weaverthe unforgettable Lieutenant Ripley from the saga Alienthe ambitious and perfidious executive Katharine Parker of women’s weapons and empathic scientist Dian Fossey of Gorillas in the Mistis a choice consistent with that line and with the current times: Few actresses, like her, have managed to embody the image of a strong and intelligent woman that, especially a few decades ago, went outside the traditional molds that the film industry continued to almost always assign to them.
“Three-time Oscar-nominated, BAFTA- and Golden Globe-winning actress Sigourney Weaver has created a set of unforgettable charactersboth comedy and drama […]. Over the years, She has captivated audiences and earned their admiration as one of the most beloved performers on stage and screen worldwide.“, the Academy itself said in the statement announcing it this Tuesday, where it also celebrated her eclectic work, “a reflection of her versatility, charisma and indisputable talent as an actress.”
A definitive first role
Weaver is one of those particular cases of performers whose career was indelibly marked by what was practically their first role, and this despite the fact that Yale University, where he studied, did not predict much of a future for him. He was the intrepid Lieutenant Ripley in Alien, the eighth passenger (1979), directed by Ridley Scott, and the aftermath that followed. The actress continues to be for many that wounded and disheveled astronaut who walks, flamethrower in hand, the corridors of a ship taken over by the most terrifying extraterrestrial creatures that science fiction has perhaps ever created. She had previously dabbled with minor roles, such as a brief appearance in the Annie Hall (1977) Woody Allen. But it was that intergalactic horror story that made her an essential and powerful face of 80s cinema.
Along that path, that of giving life to women as powerful as their physique (she is 1.82 m tall) and her personality, continued his career. In The year we lived dangerously (1982), a journalistic adventure film set in the turbulent Indonesia of Sukarno’s overthrow, was much more than the romantic counterpart of Mel Gibson; in The Ghostbusters (1984) made her foray into comedy as a funny and sensual victim of ghosts, and in women’s weapons (1988) became the competitive and somewhat evil manager of a company faced with a Melanie Griffith apparently naive in dispute for his position and for the love of Harrison Ford. Even today, that remains a cinematographic milestone as one of the first films that put women in charge in the office on screen.
Most moving and lasting in memory was her role as the scientist Dian Fosseya real person of enormous prestige in the world of primatology, in Gorillas in the Mist (1988), a film that clouded the eyes of several generations with the love that the biologist played by Weaver showed for some apes with whom she established a family relationship and with whom she communicated with a common language. As in the case of Alien, the eighth passenger y women’s weaponsalso this film was worth a Oscar nomination for best female performer that in all three cases it ended up escaping, but here it did give him a Golden Globe which she had also already conquered with her role as an executive. That ‘animalist’ film would also awaken his ecological sensitivitywhich has manifested itself in various commitments with NGOs and interventions at the UN.
Although giving up some meters to the claim of the box office with sequels of Ghostbusters that of Alien little necessary although still effective, in the 90s the actress continued to opt for a career that combined the most popular roles with prestigious cinema: two major films such as The ice storm (1997), in which he was placed under the orders of The Lee to portray the crisis of the classic family model and of an entire society, the American one, based on it, winning a BAFTA, and Death and the maiden (1994), intense thriller about the aftermath of the Chilean dictatorship directed by Roman Polanski and based on the novel by Ariel Dorfman, contributed to shoring up her image as one of the film actresses destined to last. Meanwhile, more conventional roles such as that of the psychologist Copycat (1995), an intrigue that sought to exploit the vein of The silence of the lambsor the stepmother in Snow White, a horror story (1997), demonstrated their ability to tackle all types of characters, as long as they displayed personality and brains.
Less prominence
The two thousand brought with them a less memorable stage of his career, in which blockbusters for all audiences abounded and where his role in the casts was less than in previous times. The best example is Avatar (2009), where he repeated with James Cameron after the second Alien and gave life to a scientist again, or the quasi-Spanish one A monster comes to see me (2016), from the now Oscar-winning Juan Antonio Bayona, with whom she will be reunited at the ceremony this Saturday in Valladolid, and in which she played the protagonist’s grandmother. This has not been her only contact with our cinema: before, she had already worked with Rodrigo Cortes in Red Lights (2012), and in 2021 he received the Donostia Award at the San Sebastián Festivalrecognition of a career in which, in addition to those mentioned, he has worked at the service of names that have marked the cinema of an era, such as Peter Weir, Mike Nichols, David Fincher o M. Night Shyamalan.
These last few years have also been when, in addition to continue being involved in theater as she has throughout almost her entire career -she runs it with her husband, the theater director Jim Simpsona room in Manhattan-, his career has increasingly focused on televisionas is the case with so many industry professionals: Political Animals (2012), in which she played a former American first lady turned governor of Illinois, an entertaining political-family drama, is perhaps her most memorable role in this medium..
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