Sigourney Weaver Describes Standing Up to James Cameron on ALIENS When He Scolded a Young Actress
It takes a village of people to make a movie, and it also takes a brave person to put someone in their place when they treat a co-worker poorly.
Oscar nominated actress Sigourney Weaver recently explained to The New York Times that she once stood up to director James Cameron during their first movie together, the 1986 sequel, Aliens.
The science-fiction action movie marked Weaver’s return as Ellen Ripley after the success of Ridley Scott’s “Alien.” Cameron was new to the franchise and was butting heads on set with a young female actor who was struggling with some of the props.
Weaver recalled, “I sort of trundled up to him and I said, ‘You know, when you yell at an actor, you yell at all of us, so understand that what she was doing actually was very hard.
Maybe shoot something else while she gets used to doing this stuff the way you want it.’” Cameron took her advice, she added. Weaver said, “He’s a good guy. I really do think Jim has mellowed.”
The actor also remembered getting dinner with Cameron after the two wrapped production on Aliens and “he hadn’t been like that directing. He was wildly funny, witty. I can understand why that guy couldn’t come out during ‘Aliens,’ because that was a tough shoot, especially for him. Let’s put it this way: I’m glad I wasn’t shooting ‘The Abyss’ with him.”
Weaver is referring to Cameron’s 1989 thriller starring Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Michael Biehn. The film’s production was fraught, to say the least, with the cast and crew’s health and safety constantly in jeopardy. As recounted by SyFy:
“Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio had a physical and emotional breakdown on set, and Harris admitted he broke into a fit of sobbing while driving home one day because of the stress. At one point, a lightning storm ripped a hole in the black tarp covering the tank, and since repairing it took too much time and production was already running over, they started shooting at night. Too much exposure to chlorine burned divers’ skin and turned their hair white.”
“We were guinea pigs, in a way,” Harris once told Entertainment Weekly. “Jim wasn’t quite sure how this was all gonna go down… [in the drowning scene I was] screaming at her to come back and wake up, and I was slapping her across the face and I see that they’ve run out of film in the camera — there’s a light on the camera — and nobody had said anything.
‘And Mary Elizabeth stood up and said, ‘We are not animals!” and walked off the set. They were going to let me just keep slapping her around!”
It sounds like Cameron had a bad moment and he took out some frustrations on this actor, but with Weaver calling him out, he was able to change his behavior and redeem himself. We all slip up, but it’s how we move forward that really counts.
Weaver has gone on to star in James Cameron’s Avatar franchise, which just released its third film, Avatar: Fire and Ash. Avatar 4, which Cameron says will center more on Weaver’s character, is scheduled to be released in theatres in 2029.
via: Variety