C O L L E C T O R S ' C A R D S Brilliant postcards Send an electronic postcard with interesting facts about our Brilliant Careers subjects ___________________ Learn more about Sigourney Weaver's brilliant career at barnesandnoble.com ___________________   R E C E N T L Y - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE BRILLIANT CAREERS ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - -   I N T R O Why we launched Brilliant Careers		FOR 20 YEARS, SIGOURNEY WEAVER HAS DEFINED THE TAKE-NO-PRISONERS HEROINE. BY CYNTHIA JOYCE | No matter how many updates there may be on the female action hero, no matter how many technological innovations or anatomical enhancements, no one could ever replace Sigourney Weaver's Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley. When Weaver first brought that character to life in the first "Alien" movie 20 years ago, she became the anti-Barbie -- big-brained and small-chested. She was the first of a new generation of actresses to play a strong female lead with composure and dignity, not like some high-strung thoroughbred waiting to be broken. Two decades, three sequels and hundreds of slain extraterrestrials later, Ripley still reigns as film's finest female ass-kicker. She's what G.I. Jane wishes she could be when she grows up. (Indeed, the bald Demi Moore character was a cheap ripoff of the "Alien 3" Ripley -- but where Weaver sans cheveux was all androgynous innuendo, Moore just looked like the victim of a grade-school scissor incident turned sour.) Without Ripley, there would be no Lara Croft; and without Weaver, the coldly beautiful Gillian Andersons of the world wouldn't have a career. Winona Ryder, Weaver's "Alien: Resurrection" co-star, once said that Weaver "is the one person who has shown us you can do it all." More accurately, Weaver has shown us that Weaver can do it all. Among her more than two dozen roles, she's played the bitch princess of Wall Street ("Working Girl"); a bitter, hardened housewife ("The Ice Storm"); a former political prisoner and rape victim ("Death and the Maiden"); the first lady ("Dave"); a wicked stepmother ("Snow White") and an eccentric ape tracker ("Gorillas in the Mist") -- in each case proving that she's not afraid to be a bitch, that she's not just another dame who's protecting a soft center. Still, she infuses her characters with a complexity that suggests they're not so much hardened as they are desperate -- past the breaking point and just trying to survive. If Weaver has defined her career by playing women on the edge, it was the story of a woman who's actually gone over that edge that has elicited her best performance to date. In the film adaptation of Ariel Dorfman's play "Death and the Maiden," Weaver plays Paulina Escobar, a former political prisoner who encounters a man she suspects may have been her torturer 15 years earlier. As the unhinged Escobar, Weaver spirals through varying degrees of dementia, emotions turning on a dime with a subtle slackening of her jaw or slight tilt of her head. An inviting look becomes a forbidding one with the mere closing of her lips over her trademark toothy, seductive half-smile. As Escobar turns the tables on her presumed torturer, Dr. Roberto Miranda, Weaver makes us aware that there's a certain clairvoyance that accompanies madness. Holding Dr. Miranda at gunpoint, Escobar demands that he confess to raping her, despite the protestations of her husband. When it's clear to her that her own husband thinks she's mad, she shoots him a look full of hurt and betrayal, one that seems to say, "Just because I'm delusional doesn't mean I'm wrong." N E X T_ P A G E .|. Playing it straight for comedy   - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - R E S O U R C E   P A G E Click here for more information about the people profiled in Brilliant Careers. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.

 

PHOTOGRAPH BY MOSHE BRAKHA, COURTESY OF APPLE COMPUTER, INC.