After hoisting a saltire flag for the local film industry with its opening night premiere of The Flying Scotsman, the 60th Edinburgh International Film Festival entered the Hollywood big time on its first full day of screenings and live events. For 90 minutes on Tuesday afternoon, Sigourney Weaver charmed a packed Cineworld cinema with on-set anecdotes and candid comments that ranged across her entire career. Primarily in town to promote the UK Premiere of Snow Cake – in which she plays a high-functioning autistic – Weaver took questions on stage from EIFF Artistic Director Shane Danielsen before the mike was passed over to the audience.
Most of the fans lining up for autographs on the red carpet outside had been brandishing Alien-related memorabilia, so it was fitting that Weaver let slip a couple of secrets about her first leading role – including the fact that she nearly turned it down, thinking herself more in the Woody Allen and Mike Nichols mould until Ridley Scott twisted her arm by showing her H.R. Giger’s designs. And, according to the actress, the director slammed her first costume test as looking like “f***ing Jackie Onassis in space”. Oh, and her take on the Alien 3 debacle? Even at the time, she knew that David Fincher was a “brilliant, inspired director” who was undercut by 20th Century Fox’s fears over the script.
Further down the line, it was a different science fiction movie connection that landed her the role in Snow Cake. It wasn’t director Marc Evans who brought the script to her attention, but Alan Rickman, her co-star from Galaxy Quest. Their off-screen friendship underpins their characters’ on-screen relationship, with his introverted performance balancing with her physically demanding turn. This isn’t just Rain Man for ladies: Linda, an autistic mother facing up to the death of her young daughter, is one of the most difficult and emotionally complex characters that Weaver has tackled in a career that’s gone from Ghostbusters to Death And The Maiden to The Ice Storm.
So what else did we learn about Sigourney’s projects in the pipeline? Infamous (bandied around Hollywood as ‘the other’ Truman Capote film) casts her as the writer’s friend Babe Paley and paints social butterfly Capote like “a glass of champagne”. In Jake Kasdan’s comedy The TV Set, she plays an evil network boss who prefers shows called Slut Wars to quality broadcasts. Ben Stiller was set to play her role until he dropped out for the birth of his son. Weaver insists that not one word was rewritten despite the character’s sex change. She has just returned to Rwanda with a crew from BBC Bristol for a follow-up documentary 18 years after Gorillas In The Mist. And now she’s heading straight from Edinburgh to the Mexico City set of political drama Vantage Point… provided, of course, that all of her hand luggage has been stowed in the hold.
Alan Morrison