Sigourney Weaver revealed how her late actress mother Elizabeth Inglis tried to discourage her from following in her footsteps.
Inglis was a British actress who had a successful stage career in the 1930s and appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 thriller “The 39 Steps” and William Wyler’s 1940 film noir drama “The Letter.”
During a recent interview with AARP magazine, Weaver, 76, recalled that she enrolled in Yale School of Drama against Inglis’s advice. Weaver, who admitted that she was “terribly shy” and “vulnerable” by nature, said her mother warned her that she was too sensitive for Hollywood.
“Dear, they will eat you alive!” Weaver remembered Inglis telling her.
Weaver said that the feedback she received from her Yale professors also did not help boost her confidence.
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“They told me I had no talent,” Weaver said. “And that I’d never get anywhere.”
During a December appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” Weaver recalled how she reacted to her professors’ hurtful words.
“I think I had a nervous breakdown, actually,” she admitted. “But I kept it short.”
Despite the lack of encouragement, Weaver persisted in pursuing an acting career. After graduating from Yale, she worked in off-Broadway theater, cabaret and small stage productions throughout the mid-1970s.
“I hung in there just out of spite,” Weaver told Colbert of her decision to continue with her acting career.
“I thought it was so irresponsible for teachers at an art school to make everybody feel so bad because I wasn’t the only person they made feel bad,” she continued. “But to think your job when you’ve already gotten in a school that only takes one out of 500 people or something, that they think it’s their job to make you give up your dream – I think it’s just crazy.”
In 1979, she made her career breakthrough when she starred as Ellen Ripley in Ridley Scott’s science-fiction horror classic “Alien.”
The film was a major critical and commercial success and made Weaver an A-list Hollywood star. Weaver reprised her iconic role as Ripley in “Alien’s” three sequels, including 1986’s “Aliens,” which earned her a best actress Oscar nomination, as well as “Alien 3” (1992) and “Alien: Resurrection” (1997).
In 1988, she received a best actress Academy Award nomination for “Gorillas in the Mist” and best supporting actress nod for “Working Girl.” She has also won three Golden Globes and earned multiple Emmy Award nominations.
Weaver’s now decades-long career has included major roles across film, television and stage. In addition to the “Alien” film series, she has starred in three other blockbuster franchises, including “Avatar,” “Ghostbusters” and Marvel’s “The Defenders.”
The actress will next appear in the third installment of the “Avatar” franchise, “Avatar: Fire and Ash.” Weaver appeared in the first film “Avatar,” which reunited her with “Alien” director James Cameron. She played Dr. Grace Augustine, a human xenobotanist and leader of the Avatar Program on Pandora, who serves as a mentor to the movie’s protagonist Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) but dies at the end of the film.
In the second movie, “Avatar: The Way of Water,” Weaver portrayed a very different character. She returned as Kiri, a 14-year-old Na’vi girl, who is later revealed to be the daughter of her original character.
Weaver is once again playing Kiri, who was adopted by Jake Sully and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), in the third movie of the blockbuster franchise.
While speaking to AARP, Weaver reflected on her mother’s mixed reaction to her success.
“She was ambivalent about my success,” Weaver admitted.
Weaver noted that her mother’s own career was cut short after she gave up acting to focus on her family.
Inglis retired in the early 1940s when she married Weaver’s father, television executive Sylvester “Pat” Weaver Jr. Pat was a major industry figure who served as president of NBC Television from 1953 to 1955 and created “The Today Show” and “The Tonight Show.”
“It was not great for her to give up acting, but in those days, women did that — especially if they were married to someone like my father, who was running a whole world,” Weaver said. “She was astonished by my success, and it was sometimes very difficult for her.”
Inglis and Pat were also parents to Weaver’s younger brother Trajan, who has stayed out of the spotlight. Pat died at the age of 93 in 2002 and Inglis passed away in 2007 at age 94.
During her interview with AARP, Weaver explained that she held off on making her London stage debut because of her mother. The actress starred as Prospero in Jamie Lloyd’s West End production of William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” from December 2024 to February 2025.
“I had to wait until my mother died to do theater in London,” Weaver shared. “She would not have been in the front row cheering me on. I don’t know why. I can’t explain it.”
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When asked if Weaver felt that Inglis was with her “in spirit” when she finally took the London stage, the actress said, “Kind of … a little bit.”
“That’s my home,” she said of theater. “When I got to the star’s dressing room, I felt like the theater gods had wanted me to come, as if they were saying, ‘You’ve earned the right to be here. We’ve always been on your side. I’m glad we can tell you now.’”
Weaver has previously opened up about the complicated relationship she shared with her mother.
During a 2008 interview with the Telegraph, Weaver recalled a hurtful remark that Inglis – who was regarded as a great beauty – made about her daughter’s appearance.
The actress, who is 5-foot-11, explained that she was insecure about her height when she was growing up.
“I always felt gangly,” she admitted. “I was teased at school for being a too-tall beanpole, and I yearned to be the pretty one.”
“When I was about eight I asked my mom if I was pretty. She said, ‘No, dear, you’re just plain,'” Weaver remembered.
“That was… well, hard. I thought, ‘Gee, if your mom doesn’t even think you are pretty…'”
Weaver explained that the negative comment had a lasting impact on her self-confidence.
“It took me a long time to realize I was prettier than plain,” Weaver said, adding that she underwent “lots and lots of therapy.”
However, the “Wall-E” actress noted that she believed Inglis had good intentions when she made the remark.
“My mother meant well, I know,” she said. “But in her very English way she was worried her kids would grow up conceited. She said it for the best of reasons. But I became a really awkward teenager.”
While speaking with the Mirror in 2008, Weaver recalled that Inglis was a distant and aloof parent for most of her life.
“We had a difficult relationship,” she said. “My mother was a difficult person to know.”
“She was very, very private,” Weaver continued. “There were lots of mother-daughter things that we never got a chance to do.”
“She was such an athlete when she was younger — she qualified for Wimbledon when she was 16, but her father wouldn’t let her play because he said it was a rich person’s sport,” she added. “And I know it sounds funny, but she was very serious about golf, and that took up so much of her time.”
In a 2017 interview with the Telegraph, Weaver shared that Inglis kept her former life as an actress mostly a secret from her.
“I never heard her say anything about it, really,” she recalled. “Once I was in Hollywood and something discouraging happened, and she said, ‘Well, now you see why I gave it up.’ And that’s about all.”
Weaver remembered that she later discovered her mother had once been fairly successful.
“You know, it was years later, after she died, that I found all her playbills,” she said. “She was in repertory in England, and she was a big star on the London stage in a couple of plays.”
Weaver noted that she wished she could have heard stories from Inglis about her career including her time working with Hitchcock on “The 39 Steps” and co-starring with Bette Davis in “The Letter.”
“I would have loved to have talked with her about it, but she was so private,” Weaver said.
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The “Heartbreakers” star told the Telegraph in 2008 that she has taken a very different approach to parenting from that of her mother. Weaver shares her child Shar, 35, with her husband of 41 years, theater and film director Jim Simpson.
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However, Weaver previously shared that she and her mother became closer during the last few years of Inglis’ life. During her 2008 interview with the Mirror, Weaver opened up about Inglis’ death for the first time after the actress’s mother passed away from natural causes a year prior.
“I was with her when she died. She’d had a tough couple of years,” Weaver said. “She was 94 and, luckily, I had been able to spend quite a bit of time with her. She had a very peaceful end, I was holding her hand.”
“I just get the sense that she is quite content, that her energy is busy somewhere and it has been set free,” she continued.
“She had really lived her life. I miss her but I feel she is still with me,” Weaver added. “I am grateful for the five years that I had with her towards the end, where we became very good friends.”
