”When I burst into the board room, that was my Bette Davis scene,” says Sigourney Weaver, speaking of her role in ”Working Girl,” the new Mike Nichols comedy.
Weaver, who has come to epitomize the strong woman of the `80s in such roles as the Rambette astronaut in ”Aliens” and the fiercely devoted primatoligist Dian Fossey of ”Gorillas in the Mist,” is enjoying a change of pace in the new movie, playing Melanie Griffith`s underhanded Wall Street boss. It`s an assignment she likes, Weaver says, partly because it allows her to play a strong woman role for laughs.
”It`s very liberating not to have to carry the picture and be sympathetic,” Weaver says between sips of Perrier in a Park Avenue hotel suite, where she is gamely soldiering through a day of interviews. ”I had just carried three movies in a row. I loved the idea of playing a supporting role with Melanie as the star. It felt perfect. After eight weeks of filming
`Gorillas` in Central Africa, I wanted to wear nice clothes and sleep in a nice bed. In one scene, I felt like Fay Wray, dressed in white.”
In the film, Weaver`s character, named Katharine, steals Griffith`s bright idea, only to have the tables turned when she`s injured in a ski accident and Griffith moves into her apartment and masquerades as her.
”When I was doing research on Wall Street, in brokerage houses, a lot of the women I met were slightly quiet about what they were doing, even though they were smart and very capable. They tended to downplay their successes.
”I think there still was a lot of concern about how they were being perceived, both by men and by women within their firms. They tended to downplay the reality of their successes. I feel that what Katharine would have done is steal her idea, then get her a nice box of potpourri. She goes through the motions of being a friend, but she doesn`t know what a friend is. She could probably go right down the street and get another job.”
Weaver, daughter of media innovator and onetime NBC-TV kingpin Sylvester
(Pat) Weaver, smiles when asked whether her own patrician background got her the job.
”I`m like a baby Bush, with that background,” she says in reference to being reared on the Upper East Side with Long Island summers, schooled at Sarah Lawrence, Stanford and Yale. ”That sort of being brought up by my parents to run the world. What often works against me in casting is that people tend to feel I`m very Bryn Mawr or something like that.
”But in this instance, it was exactly what Mike wanted. The character of Katharine comes from that world of privilege and feels she`s entitled to screw everyone else, because she`s certain that the power`s better off with someone like herself. She was brought up to believe that.
”There are so many of these rich professional women running around New York. They all have this veneer of perfection, but you wonder: `Who are they really, inside? Do they go home and kick the dog?` Some of those women said to me, `Oh, that awful secretary! She stole your clothes and slept in your bed!` ”
Sigourney (born Susan) Weaver comes from an old California family. Her paternal grandfather, Sylvester Weaver Sr., made money selling roofing materials in Los Angeles. Her grandmother wrote operas. Her late uncle, Winston (Doodles) Weaver, was the singer with Spike Jones` song-murdering band. Her mother, Elizabeth Inglis, was an English stage actress.
Actress, by the way, is a word Weaver doesn`t like. To her it connotes a lack of seriousness, something bimbolike. She prefers to be called an actor. She also prefers to be called Sigourney, a name she appropriated for herself
(from F. Scott Fitzgerald`s ”The Great Gatsby”) at the age of 14.
She reached her full height-5 feet, 10 1/2 inches-early, at the age of 13, which made her feel awkward.
”My mother saved the day. She kept telling me it was marvelous to be so stately. If she hadn`t said that, I might have grown even more self-conscious about my height.
”I was a privileged, pampered, sheltered child,” she says of the time when her father-who created the ”Tonight Show,” the ”Today Show” and the TV special-headed NBC. Her father, her mother, and her elder brother, Trajan, at one time lived in a Sutton Place apartment once owned by Marion Davies.
Weaver remembers swinging with her brother on the living room`s golden gates.
”It was as though every day had a happy ending. My brother Trajan and I had gold cards giving us the run of Radio City Music Hall. I thought everyone`s father was head of a network. It made things confusing, though, when I was learning the alphabet. Was it A-B-C or N-B-C?”
In 1956, things changed. Weaver found himself on the short end of a power struggle and quit NBC. He never worked in network television again. The gold passes to Radio City Music Hall were taken away. ”My father isn`t at all bitter,” Weaver says. ”He`s quite philosophical. But I`m sad for him. And angry for him.”
Of her career, Weaver says: ”My father is always worried about it. He`s worried I`ll be too arty. Now that I`m doing `Ghostbusters II,` he`s relaxing a bit.
”I don`t feel I have any obligation to an image, but I think it`s because of my father that my life has taken the direction it has. He always made fun of the business and the people running it. He always calls it `the racket.`
”Whenever something rotten happens to me, I have their sympathy because they`ve been through it. They wish I`d been a producer.
”When I`m with them, they`re always so astounded people keep coming up to you. I love it when 4-year-olds come up and ask me how we did the marshmallows in `Ghostbusters.` After `Gorillas,` I`ve had construction workers put down their hammers and cross the street to shake my hand. It`s nice because I didn`t think I had a name with the older audience.
”Actually, I`m planning to produce. I`d produce things I wasn`t in. It`d be too hard, acting in them. There are plenty of young actors I know who aren`t getting a break. I`d love to start putting things together for them.” Weaver, 39, is married to a director, James Simpson, 33, who is a Boston University and Yale School of Drama graduate. He was a child actor in his native Hawaii, starring in TV`s ”Hawaii Five-O.” Weaver met him while both were working at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. She made the first move, she recalls, inviting him to a party. He has directed her in ”The Merchant of Venice” and ”The Show-Off.”
”I don`t think my husband is as crazy about working with me as I am about working with him,” Weaver says. ”You have to leave the play at the theater. In `Merchant,` he pushed me. In `The Show-Off,` he let me go. I work very slowly.
”I would love to do `A Moon for the Misbegotten.` I`d love to do `The Philadelphia Story.` What you can really hope to do at Williamstown is a quick sketch, then do the play again.
”Would I direct? Well, if you`re around a good director, you want to try it. I think I`d start with something simple, a piece strong with acting, then get out of the actors` way. I wouldn`t start with `Waiting for Godot,`
although that`s such a foolproof play.
”At some point, our careers will switch. He`ll get the attention, and I`ll be quite happy about that. You have to know that it`s bound to happen. It`s cyclical. When I started making the rounds with a list of names my father gave me, the first one I called said, `Why don`t you do yourself a favor and get a job at Bloomingdale`s?`
”Before `The Year of Living Dangerously,` I`d been rejected for several roles.” When Arnold Glimcher, the producer of ”Gorillas in the Mist,” kept bringing up Dian Fossey, she says, ”I`d keep bringing up `The Good Mother.`
”If I had my ideal choice, I`d be in a film repertory company. I`ve dreamed of working in a repertory movie situation, where you work with the same people, and you play big parts, and you play small parts, and you`re part of a company.
”I now have a body of work. But I guess I feel things haven`t really changed.
”I guess I`m a typical actor, always wondering what play I`m going to do next. That`s the business. I learned that from my father. You`ve got to have a pretty tough skin. I know I can always work in a dinner theater. The studios can`t take that away from me.”
