Sigourney Weaver welled up as she considered whether her work had impacted the popularity of Kamala Harris today at the Venice Film Festival.
In response to a reporter who linked her role as Ripley in Alien to Kamal Harris, Weaver considered the thought and tears filled her eyes as she said: “We’re all so excited about Kamala and to think for one moment that my work would have anything to do with her rise makes me very happy, actually, because it’s true. I have so many women who come and thank me.” She then joked, “Sorry, I need my vodka,” to lighten the mood, as journalists in the room clapped in unison.
Weaver paid tribute to Alien writers David Giler and Walter Hill for writing the Ridley character in Alien. “My character was a person, not a woman,” she said. “They are two of the very few writers who can write a script as just a person. You don’t see her having to be girly or womanly or any of these other ideas, which are all great but women can be everything. I got to play what I realize now was an every-person part. She is all of us. She is what you become when you have to find the ingenuity and don’t even have the time to be brave. Women all over the world are at the frontline.”
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Harris, who replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate for this year’s Presidential election, was narrowly ahead of Donald Trump, according to a new nationwide poll released yesterday and the sense she could cause an upset is growing.
Weaver added it had been “difficult since 2016,” when Trump won the election before losing to Biden in 2020. “We’re all very grateful about her.”
She recalled a point in Hollywood history when “suddenly they decided that older women could actually play interesting characters,” adding: “We stopped being a joke and the mother-in-law, and began becoming real people.”
The Alien and Avatar star was on the Lido this year to pick up the Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award, which two years ago she presented on the same stage to Taxi Driver writer Paul Schrader. Calling her career “very lucky” for the roles she has played, she said: “I am just so fortunate to be sent these stories that I want to be part of. I look for films that are about more than the people in them.”
The Alien star’s comments come after Deadline sat down with her for a career retrospective. You can read that feature here.
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