Sigourney Weaver Doesn't Plan on Retiring: 'I'm Fine That I Might Be the Oldest Person on the Set'

Sigourney Weaver said of acting, "I probably enjoy it more now than ever"

Sigourney Weaver
Sigourney Weaver. Photo: Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/Getty

Sigourney Weaver has no plans to quit acting anytime soon.

In a new chat with Elizabeth Banks for Interview magazine published Tuesday, the 72-year-old actress opened up about having "five projects coming out" in the near future, including this December's Avatar: The Way of Water.

"What's the goal going forward?" asked Banks, 48, who stars alongside Weaver in Call Jane, out Oct. 28. "I guess my point is I don't think you're retiring anytime soon."

"I would hope not, because I probably enjoy it more now than ever," Weaver replied. "I'm fine that I might be the oldest person on the set. Yes, I always have to go through a period of, 'Oh my god, it's happening again.' "

Added the three-time Oscar nominee, "But then, I get the joy and the explosion of letting this person out to live. And it's the most exhilarating thing in the world."

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5th Annual Voice Arts Awards
Sigourney Weaver. David Livingston/Getty

Weaver's filmography stretched back to the 1970s, when she got her big break portraying Ellen Ripley in Alien and went on to star in multiple sequels amid turns in films like Ghostbusters, Gorillas in the Mist and more. Other roles included in The Ice Storm (which nabbed her a BAFTA Award) and Working Girl, for which she took home a Golden Globe — her second after Gorillas in the Mist.

Weaver has taken on close to 70 film projects over the years, ranging from live-action horror to lending her voice to the animated family genre. But if she could go back in time and revisit one film set, it would be 1982's The Year of Living Dangerously.

"I think it was [director Peter Weir] who introduced me to film, really," she told Banks. "I learned so much from him. I'd lost touch with him, and then I worked in Australia this past fall and unfortunately, we couldn't meet, but we had such a good talk. It was like no time had passed."

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And while she admitted accolades are something she does "think about," Weaver told Banks that the work itself is the thing that most excites her.

"What I'm really excited about this year is that with five things coming out, I'm able to see what's important to me as an artist: this transformation physically from one character to another, from one situation to another," she explained. "It's much more important to me to have had these opportunities than to hold a statuette in my hand."

For the actress, "I think what we get envious of is not the award, but the fact that another actor got a chance to play this fabulous woman or man, and the fact that it's your community saying, 'Okay, this was a good one,' " she explained.

"I think that's really precious. But we have to train ourselves not to think about these things," Weaver said.

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