Sigourney Weaver recently told The New York Times that she even faced James Cameron in their first film together in 1986, Alien. The sci-fi action film marks Weaver’s return to the role of Ellen Ripley, following the success of Ridley Scott’s Alien. Cameron was new to the series and was headbutting on set with a young female actor who was struggling with some of the props.
“I limped up to him and said, ‘I want you to understand that what she’s actually doing is really hard, because if you’re yelling at an actor, you’re yelling at all of us. Maybe we can shoot another thing until she gets used to doing this job the way you want it,'” Weaver recalled.
Prime Minister David Cameron took her advice, she added. “He’s a good guy. I really think Jim has calmed down,” Weaver said.
The actor also remembers having dinner with Cameron after two Alien films, saying, “He wasn’t that kind of director. He was so funny and witty. I don’t understand why that guy wasn’t available during Alien. I understand why he wasn’t available during the filming of ‘Alien’, because that was a particularly difficult shoot for him. I’m glad I didn’t film ‘The Abyss’ with him.”
Weaver is referring to Cameron’s 1989 thriller starring Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Michael Biehn. The production of this film involved situations where the health and safety of the cast and crew were constantly at risk, to say the least. As detailed by SyFy, “Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio had a physical and mental breakdown on set, and Harris admitted that one day she started crying in her car on the way home due to stress. At one point, a thunderstorm tore a hole in the black tarp covering the tank, which took too long to repair and production was already overrun, so filming began at night. Overexposure to chlorine burned the divers’ skin and turned their hair white.”
“In a way, we were guinea pigs,” Harris once told Entertainment Weekly. “Jim wasn’t really sure how this was going to go…[During the drowning scene]I yelled at her to come back and wake up. And I was slapping her in the face, and I saw the camera was out of film — cameras have lights — and no one said anything. Then Mary Elizabeth stood up and said, ‘We’re not animals!'” and walked off the set. They were going to make me keep slapping her! ”
Weaver was not deterred from reuniting with Cameron for the Avatar series, despite what Cameron was like on set in the past. She has appeared in all three Avatar movies so far. Co-star Stephen Lang told the Times that “parts of Jim have gotten richer and brighter over the years,” adding, “I think he’s embarked on a course of self-improvement. And I wouldn’t say this is actually necessarily something he’s done consciously. I just think he’s headed in that direction.”
“Marinating is a nice word, isn’t it?” Prime Minister Cameron himself told the publication. “I didn’t scream all day, but every once in a while. Everyone is entitled to have bad days. If I’m not working, please don’t bother me.”
Cameron’s latest film, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is currently showing in theaters across the United States.
