Sigourney Weaver: Ellen Ripley – Alien (1979)
By the time Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett managed to get a studio go-ahead on their ‘Jaws in space’ project, it was already five years old. It had been through several title changes, hundreds of pages of rewrites, the influence of a wide variety of artists, and one mental breakdown (O’Bannon’s, complete with a spell in an institution.) But it wasn’t until Star Wars was released in 1977 that 20th Century Fox finally gained the confidence to invest in this weird idea of space themed movies. The only space themed movie available to them at that time was Alien, so Fox gave it to the producers (Walter Hill and David Giler) in a highly redacted form, making sure that at every turn they were wresting it away from the all-too-close realm of B-movie doom.
The concept was accepted, and initially greenlit at a budget of $4.2million. Then Ridley Scott came on board to direct, reams of storyboards in hand, and the budget was doubled. Of course, it is only retrospectively that we know just how ludicrously successful this movie was going to be. But even at the time, there was, in every sense, a lot riding on this spaceship. No matter how primitive its beginnings, no matter who or what it took down in its path, Alien was intended to be big.
O’ Bannon had left ‘open to interpretation’ the gender of the seven characters. Naturally, however, (bear in mind that this was the 1970s, and an action movie) – everyone assumed that the cast would be male. It was Scott who introduced the idea of Ripley being a woman, and he did it casually, after production had already begun. The studio couldn’t have been more obviously shocked than if Scott had suggested they cast a giraffe. To make matters worse, Scott couldn’t decide on who this “female Ripley” was going to be. Finally, he heard of a minor stage actress who might fit the deadpan, regulation-abiding, gun-wielding bill.
Aside from having had a small part in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, the then 29 year old Sigourney Weaver was aiming for a career in theatre. Self-confessedly “snobby” about the concept of Alien, she was wholly uninterested in the part, and went to the audition in “thigh-high hooker boots.” But unbeknownst to Weaver, she was emitting precisely the sort of disinterest that Scott wanted in the character. For Scott, this was the moment at which he met Ellen Ripley. For the studio officials, this was the moment at which most of them had to start breathing into paper bags. Not only was the main protagonist, most capable fighter and sole survivor of this cost-vital venture female, but she was an almost completely unknown female.
Weaver was noticeably inexperienced on set. Scott kept having to tell her not to look into the camera, he occasionally yelled at her rather than at a superior actor that had actually caused the problem, and he used the natural tension between newcomer Weaver and the rest of the veteran cast to reinforce the onscreen tension between Ripley and the other members of the crew.
But if ever there was an answer to the question what sort of woman could defeat a twenty foot, acid-bleeding monster and survive a plethora of face-hugging, chest-busting, set-drenching gore and general human-destroying, it was Ellen Ripley. Flamethrower in hand, and with the underwear beneath her flight suit nothing but the perfunctory, standard issue, Ripley – and Weaver – stood at the very forefront of that wave started in the 1970s of strong, capable, central female characters that didn’t depend on glamour for their onscreen presence. Ripley became an instant icon, and Weaver an instant – and enduring – star.
Weaver gives all credit to Scott for making Ellen Ripley who she was, but Scott claims a large part of Ripley simply showed up alongside Weaver on the day of her audition. On his account, such was Weaver’s attitude on that day that if Ripley had confronted the alien in those thigh-high boots, it probably would have gladly just chucked itself out of the spaceship.