Sigourney Weaver (born Susan Alexandra Weaver on October 8, 1949 in New York City) is an Oscar-nominated American actress. (She may have other names: she once told friends at Stanford that she had several names, two of which were "Susan".)Weaver is the daughter of late NBC television executive Pat Weaver and Desirée Hawkins Ingles, a British actress. Her uncle, Doodles Weaver, was a comedian and actor.
She began using the name Sigourney Weaver in 1963, after a character in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (in Chapter 3, golfer Jordan Baker tells Nick that her telephone number is listed under her aunt, Mrs. Sigourney Howard, who never appears in the book or movie). She attended the prestigious Ethel Walker School, a prep school in Simsbury, Connecticut, graduated from Stanford University, and studied law at Harvard Law School, then drama at Yale School of Drama, where she appeared in original plays by friend and classmate Christopher Durang. She later appeared in the 1981 off-Broadway production of his comedy Beyond Therapy.
Weaver married theater director Jim Simpson (The Flea Theater) in 1984. They have one child, Charlotte Simpson, who was born in 1990.
After making Gorillas in the Mist, she became a supporter of The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and is now the DFGFI's honorary chairperson.
Weaver is an environmentalist. In October 2006 she drew international attention through a news conference at the start of a United Nations General Assembly policy deliberation. She outlined the widespread threat to ocean habitats posed by deep-sea trawling, an industrial method for harvesting fish. She also narrated the Discovery Channel show Planet Earth, which focuses on the wonders of our world.
Weaver is notable for her stature, standing 6' (1.83 m) tall. She is also notable for her wardrobe: She appears at many awards shows, wearing dresses by famous designers. At one time in the 1990s, two magazines appointed her Best Dressed and Worst Dressed, respectively.