Sigourney Weaver's Real Name: Susan Alexandra Weaver

Quick answer: Sigourney Weaver was born Susan Alexandra Weaver on October 8, 1949, in New York City. At 14 she renamed herself Sigourney after a character in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. She is best known as Ellen Ripley in Alien (1979) and its sequels, and she has received three Oscar nominations (Britannica; Library of Congress).

Real name and early life

Britannica gives her original name as Susan Alexandra Weaver. The Library of Congress name authority files her as "Weaver, Sigourney," with a citation reading "b. Susan Alexandra Weaver, October 8, 1949 in New York City."

Britannica says she grew up among New York's media elite. Her father, Sylvester "Pat" Weaver, was president of NBC in the 1950s. Her mother, Elizabeth Inglis, was an English actress who appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (1935). By 14, Weaver had reached her full height of 5 feet 11 inches. She felt that "Susan" was too short a name for someone so tall, so she adopted Sigourney from The Great Gatsby.

She earned an English degree from Stanford University in 1972 and then studied drama at Yale, where Meryl Streep was among her contemporaries. Britannica says her teachers gave her little encouragement, and that support from playwright friends such as Christopher Durang proved more important to her early career.

Career highlights

After Yale, Weaver acted onstage in Albert Innaurato's Gemini and in several Durang plays, and she had a walk-on in Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977). Warren Beatty saw her stage work and recommended her to Ridley Scott, who cast her as Ripley in Alien (1979), a role originally written for a man. The film made the 29-year-old a household name. She returned in Aliens (1986), which brought her first Oscar nomination for best actress, and in Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection.

Two 1988 films brought two more Oscar nominations: best actress for playing zoologist Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist, and best supporting actress as a scheming executive in Mike Nichols's Working Girl. She played a possessed cellist in Ghostbusters (1984) and returned in later films, including Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021). Her comedies include Dave (1993) and the cult hit Galaxy Quest (1999), and she co-starred with Kevin Kline in Ang Lee's The Ice Storm (1997).

She reteamed with James Cameron to play Dr. Grace Augustine in Avatar (2009), and she played Kiri in Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) and Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025). Learn more about her Yale contemporary on our Meryl Streep real name page.

Name notes for searchers

Sigourney is a chosen name, not a birth name. Britannica says she took it from a character in The Great Gatsby. Library records still list Susan Alexandra Weaver as her birth name, and Weaver is her family surname.