DATE: Wednesday, November 26, 1997          TAG: 9711260078

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Interview 

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  134 lines

SIGNOURNEY WEAVER RETURNS TO HER TOUGH-AS-NAILS ROLE IN THE ``ALIENS'' SERIES

SIGOURNEY WEAVER looked glamorous and chic in her black-and-white Dolce et Gabbana designer gown as she talked about going toe to toe, once again, with the Big Ugly.

The real Sigourney may be demurely describing her ``short corset look'' gown, but her work clothes are decidedly grimier in ``Alien Resurrection,'' part four of the monster-from-hell franchise.

She pondered the question of just why she wanted to get down and dirty again before saying, ``It wasn't the money.''

``It would have been easy to say `no' to the money,'' she said. ``After all, my husband (theatrical director Jim Simpson) and my daughter (7-year-old Charlotte) live quite simply in New York City. Although, I'll tell you, I can't really afford this dress. I didn't even get a celebrity discount! But, aside, how much can you eat? How much money do you really need? No, the attraction of going back to the character of Ripley was to play a totally different side of her - a totally different Ripley.''

There were several reasons why even the staunchest of ``Alien'' fans had given up on Part 4 ever seeing the darkness of space. For one, Ripley, perhaps the most self-sufficient female in screen history, died a most final-looking death in ``Aliens 3.'' She had been impregnated by ``the thing,'' the monster, and had to be sacrificed to save the human race from annihilation. Perhaps more fatal, the 1992 entry failed miserably at the box office - probably because it was so dark and filled with religious allegories, unlike the first two super-hit movies.

However, Ripley lives again, with the help of an inventive script writer who came up with a mixture of human and alien genetics (DNA and cloning).

Weaver, who is also the producer, said: ``I was happy to die in the last one. I felt the time had come. I didn't know that I was providing a great possibility for sci-fi writers.''

The re-created Ripley is a cloned being who is not the same person. In fact, she may not be a person at all. In a scene that's perfect for Mother's Day, she snuggles up to a snarling, drooling, sharp-toothed thing that, well, uh, only a mother could love.

``What she is and isn't is the intriguing thing to play,'' Weaver said.

``She doesn't know gender. She thinks of males and females as the same, but she hasn't chosen sides. As a human, she just wanted to get off the ship and have a life. Now, that's not possible for her. Ironically, she feels relief with the aliens. She feels cynicism when she's with humans. Humans are deceptive. The aliens may be evil but they're honestly evil, in a way. It's fascinating to play. There are all kind of possibilities.''

Weaver grew up in more elegant surroundings. Her father, Sylvester ``Pat'' Weaver was president of NBC and created the ``Today'' and the ``Tonight'' shows. There were famous people, like Arturo Toscanini, in the living room every night. Young Susan Weaver re-named herself Sigourney after a minor character in F. Scott Fitzgerald's ``The Great Gatsby'' ``because I liked the name better.''

She has a master's degree from Yale Drama School where a professor told her to give up acting because she was too tall. She remembers, with only a hint of humor, that Meryl Streep, who was a year or so ahead, got all the good roles at Yale.

I first met Weaver in an elevator in the early 1980s when she had jogged over to the 20th Century Fox building in New York City intent on signing a seven-year contract. Clad in a blue jogging outfit, she was eager for advice. When she said the contract was for seven years, our opinion was that she should continue jogging. She did - vowing that she'd think about it for another day. ``I never did sign that contract,'' she laughs today. It worked out well, since she ended up as the producer as well as the star of parts three and four of the ``Alien'' series.

She's a little loath to take up the mantle that has been handed her as gung-ho heroine to little girls around the world. As Ripley, she's the woman who is stronger and smarter than the men around her.

``It's either Ripley or Xena with little girls,'' she smiled. ``I'm expecting my daughter to get a Xena doll. At the moment, she has a Barbie doll but it's not standard Barbie. It's a Hawaiian hula Barbie. Girls need a role model. If Ripley even came up against the Predator or the Terminator, she'd wipe them out. No contest.

``Girls need an action role model, but Ripley isn't totally admirable. It is true that, for a period of some 15 years, there were no good roles for women. I think it's turned around now. They've come to realize that you can't make a really great movie unless it has a great role for a woman. Unless it's `Guns of Navarone' or something like that.''

``Movies find it necessary,'' she added, ``to explain why women are tough - if they are tough. It's always because she's been abandoned by a man, or the family, or something like that. Movies often have to add, at the last moment, that `she's not really so tough. She really just needs a good man.' The `Alien' movies didn't find that kind of thing necessary, and they still were hits. Men didn't resent Ripley. They respected her. That's rare.''

She doesn't like to talk about Part 3, other than to say that ``it was a young man's movie.'' The 1992 film's disastrous showing at the box office might have ended the franchise, yet she says she liked the sophistication of it.

Her new director is Frenchman Jean-Pierre Jeunet, a visual stylist who stunned American viewers with the look of his film ``The City of Lost Children.'' He had expressed no interest in making American movies because he felt Americans were obsessed with special effects, not plots. Summoned to Hollywood for a conference, he stopped in New York and was won over by Sigourney, who speaks French.

Her most difficult scenes in ``Alien Resurrection'' were the underwater ones. ``They built this pool on the 20th Century Fox lot and then made it dark. I said, `I know you're paying me a lot of money, but I'm not going into water that dark.' But I did. The object was that you had to remain underwater until your air ran out. That saved money. Then, a diver was supposed to come and get you. But he wasn't always there when he was supposed to be. It was very dangerous. I really don't like giving up air.''

The scene she is most proud of is when Ripley takes on the male crew in a basketball game, and bests them at their own game. For it, she trained for two weeks with former UCLA basketball player Nigel Miguel. ``I fought hard to get that scene right. It's sexual and it's graceful and I really think it's the best thing in the movie. Next to my wedding day and the birth of my daughter, The Basketball Shot is the greatest moment of my life.''

Her unlikely co-star is tiny Winona Ryder, who plays Annalee Call, a member of the crew on an illegal smuggling ship called the Betty. ``Winona is so much fun,'' Weaver said. ``She's a perfect mimic and a natural actress. She brought a lot of lightness to the set - and she's so vulnerable. Perfect for the role.''

Returning co-stars include the chest burster - that little meannie who bursts from the chest and scampers away. The famous ``Queen'' alien is also back, although it required a search to find the original mold. The giant-size puppet, last seen in ``Aliens,'' was finally located in the possession of avid ``Alien'' collector Bob Burns.

``I think the important thing is what is not shown,'' Weaver said. ``What the Aliens can do to you is so unspeakably horrible that it can't be shown. Think about that. ``I missed Ripley and I'm glad to come back to her but the important thing here, as an actress, is that she no longer is necessarily the force of good. She's not the old Ripley. For an actress, that's very liberating.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

20th Century Fox

Weaver...

SUZANNE TENNER

Sigourney Weaver as Ripley has a close encounter with an old enemy

in ``Alien Resurrection.''

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