Sigourney Weaver says we've got her mixed up with someone else."My image is a real b---buster," she says. "That's ridiculous. I don't even know what that is. I think it's an idea left over from women's lib. It's certainly not me. Like most actors, I'm shy."
She has a point. Because in person, the 5-foot-10 Weaver - last seen manning the heavy artillery in "Alien Resurrection" - is actually more apt to laugh than snarl. "People think I'm cool, aloof, confident, strong," she says. "I'm actually shy and funny and silly - with an emphasis on silly. My husband calls me 'merry.'"
Striding through the lounge of a Beverly Hills hotel in tight black slacks and a clingy black sweater, Weaver still seems like a college homecoming queen. And turning 50 two months ago didn't faze her. "Oh, so I'm 50?" she recalls thinking. "I better do those things I always wanted to do." So she did. In her next movie, "Map of the World," which opens Friday for one week to make the Academy Award deadline, she takes off her clothes. And that hasn't happened since she did "Half Moon Street" in 1986.
"There's a lot of nudity in 'Map of the World,'" she says. "If you show these people as they really lived, you have to take your clothes off. It makes the film more intimate. I've done it before. When I was young, I posed for artists. There probably are some nude drawings of me circulating somewhere." But Weaver isn't the least bit troubled by a few nude scenes in a movie.
Unlike some of the heroines she has played, it turns out that her own problems are like a lot of people's problems. Like being a working mom. "It's a horrible thing to do to a child," she says about leaving her East Side river-view apartment to make and promote her movies - leaving behind her husband (theater director James Simpson) and their 9-year-old daughter, Charlotte. "I love my work, but real life is more important. I have tremendous guilt," she admits. "Every working mother has."
Weaver chose to do the midbudget "Map of the World" because the shoot was short (30 days) and the location was close (Toronto). "And it was a chance to play a normal woman for once, not someone in outer space," she says. "I'm not offered regular people too often."
Her character in "Map" may be an ordinary farm wife and school nurse, but she finds herself wearing a jail jumpsuit, something in a nauseating orange. The charge is child molestation. "For this woman, who feels so generally guilty, prison is almost a relief," Weaver says. "You keep expecting her to break down and have an 'Oh, I've been wronged!' scene - which you would see if this were on TV. But she never does, and that's refreshing."
Galaxy Quest," Weaver's other end-of-the-year release, is less likely to attract any Academy Awards. She plays a bust-thrusting blond bimbo. "I'm a has-been actress who once starred with Tim Allen in a space opera on TV," she says. "The whole crew of the show is mistaken for real space heroes by some aliens, and Tim is too vain to tell them we're just actors. Her way-out role had one unexpected consolation."I loved being blond," she says, running her hands through her flyaway brunette mop. "I like to tell people that was my real hair and this is my wig. When I was blond, people came up to me. I looked ample and friendly and warm - more inviting. I wasn't this bundle of quirks who sneaks around New York telling tourists, 'No, I'm not Susan Sarandon.' Once I had to sign Susan's name before the people would go away."
Weaver's easy humor is the characteristic she thinks people would be most surprised to hear she has. Even though she has starred in such comedies as "Dave," "Working Girl" and the "Ghostbusters" movies, "Ripley wipes them out," she says, referring to her four "Alien" adventures. "All actors know in their hearts that they're here because they got lucky," Weaver says. "'Alien' - who knows why or how that happened? I could have done something else just as good that went nowhere."
The Stanford and Yale-educated Weaver, who once aspired to a career in repertory theater, collected a reported $11 million for "Alien Resurrection." Paydays like that allow her to make less-remunerative movies like "Map of the World" and another modest effort, "Company Man." It's an independent comedy about the CIA and Fidel Castro that will open next year. Next, Weaver plans "a nice comedy shot in a pretty place," but she won't be rushing into it.
"I took a year off after 'Alien Resurrection,'" she says. "My husband and I take turns being busy. Most of the time, we lead very boring lives. We're home every night. I sit in the window seat and look at the river and my husband plays music and my daughter dances around the living room. We keep telling ourselves, 'We must go out, at least once a week' - but we're still working on that."
