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Wed 22 April 2026 20:45, UK
The protagonist of Ridley Scott’s groundbreaking 1979 sci-fi horror Alien, Ellen Ripley, is one of the greatest film characters of all time, and her status as one of pop culture’s greatest leading ladies is well-earned.
In an era where women almost never led big movies, the Nostromo’s warrant officer, played brilliantly by Sigourney Weaver, proved that ladies could kick just as much ass as men. She is still held up as one of the prime examples of a ‘strong female character’.
Ripley helped make Weaver a household name, beating out the likes of Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren to win the part, which lifted her from an unknown stage actor to a bona fide movie star. She has played the character in four different movies (to varying degrees of success) and even returned to the role in voice form for the video game Alien: Isolation. In many ways, Ripley and Weaver are the same person, and that isn’t always a good thing.
In an interview with Total Film in 2006, though, the Oscar-nominated star spoke about her relationship with the character that made her famous. She spoke about her complicated feelings towards Ripley as well as the pros and cons of being so closely associated with one fictional creation for almost 50 years.
“I’m very grateful to Ellen Ripley because who knows what would have happened if I hadn’t played her?” she said, “I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it back in 1979. I was like, ‘Oh, I want to do Shakespeare’. So I feel very lucky I ended up doing it. But when people think I’ve only done Ripley, or never done anything since…that’s a bit galling.”
To reduce Weaver’s entire career down to just four films is a huge insult, as she hasn’t played Ripley on screen since 1997 and was making strides outside of the franchise even before this, winning two Golden Globes in 1989 for Gorillas in the Mist and Working Girl, two films of very different genres, neither of which is science fiction.
She’s also had her fair share of box office success without the help of a Xenomorph, playing characters in Ghostbusters, several Pixar movies, and has a role in the upcoming Star Wars film, The Mandalorian and Grogu. She’s even in Avatar, for crying out loud, the highest-grossing film of all time, so while her complaints might come across as ungrateful on the surface, it’s not hard to understand where Weaver is coming from.
There have been many actors who have been unable to escape their iconic characters, such that Robert Patrick is constantly spoofing or paying homage to his role as the T-1000 in Terminator 2, while Leonard Nimoy wrote an entire book about how he wasn’t Spock.
Weaver isn’t like this, though, and while Ripley is an important part of her career, she has done enough elsewhere to make sure she doesn’t define her. She’s been very smart about her approach to the character, maintaining a healthy respect while also creating sufficient distance. If only she’d decided to call it a day before Alien: Resurrection, that would have saved us a whole heap of trouble.
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