Sigourney Weaver on Avatar, James Cameron and Letting the Alien Prequel Go

"You have five minutes." That's a phrase to put fear in the heart of any journalist, but there are worse ways to spend 300 seconds than in the presence of Sigourney Weaver, an actress who -- like her one-time Yale Drama School rival Meryl Streep -- is one of the few women north of 60 who still maintains a commanding presence in youth-centric Hollywood.

The five minutes have been granted so that Weaver can discuss two DVD releases that will curl a lot of sci-fi-geek toes this holiday season: Alien Anthology, out this week, takes every movie, director's cut, and extra from the previous Alien collections and serves it up in Blu-Ray, while the Avatar Extended Collector's Edition (Nov. 16 and, like the Alien set, from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment) coughs up a longer cut of the hit movie and a staggering eight hours of new material and documentaries. In our brief time together, Weaver and I spoke a bit about her participation in these influential science-fiction classics.

It's kind of astounding to think that Aliens is 25. When you look back on your career, what kind of place does it hold for you?

Well, it is a sort of seminal experience, because I'd mostly done theater up until [the first Alien]. And I also felt it such an original, exciting -- just visually, it was so exciting to work on -- so I think it's odd, Alien and Avatar, just sort of these bookends. The time has gone like that. [snaps] You know, I've been very lucky. I'm still around.

James Cameron's one of those directors who has actors who work with him repeatedly and others who very vocally declare that they'll never work with him again. When the call came for Avatar, was there any coaxing involved, or were you immediately on board?

What I love about Jim is that he dreams so big. I read the script, and I thought, Man, how's he going to do this? I just wanted to see how he was going to do it! It's so ambitious, and these things you read on the page, it's fine to read them on the page, but how are you actually going to have these flying things? And at the same time, I knew that if anyone could do this, it would be Jim. And so no matter what he asked me to do -- we were recently in the Amazon together, working on stopping this dam down there -- he is, to me, such an inspiring person and such a good person, I'm really fond of him, and I'm glad that our paths reconnected. I loved playing Grace [in Avatar]; there's a lot of Jim Cameron in Grace, but there's a gentleness along with the acerbity. I was thrilled. And I can't wait to see what he'll come up with next.

What are your feelings about the Alien prequels?

[Since the new movies will predate Ripley], that makes it easier for me. That would be odd. And I'm glad it's Ridley Scott. I wish them well. I hope the story's really interesting, because I think it's a hard act to follow with these four great directors, so I'm glad one of them is doing it. And I have a lot of ideas [Weaver smiles]; I want to keep the franchise frosty.

The nature of filmmaking changed a great deal between your two collaborations with Cameron; in Aliens, you're standing in the same room with the monster, whereas Avatar is you in front of a green screen for much of the movie. Was that a big shift for you, or did that take you back to doing stripped-down stage productions, where it's two actors and a table and a chair?

What's interesting in terms of Jim's affection for actors and knowledge of what we need [is that] even if I had done the fight with the alien queen in CGI, Jim would have made sure I had something there to battle. You can't just act that. So I think it would have been in some ways a similar experience. It's more challenging, I think, to have the guys in the alien queen outfit -- it took more determination to pull that off. But I think they're both legitimate. And I think that certain things you could do with an alien, you can't do with CGI, because there's actually a being inside. So Tom Woodruff, who played the alien in, I think, two or three of the films, I always knew there was an intelligence behind there, and that helped me enormously.

What are your own DVD habits? Having participated in so many extras at this point, do you have any favorite extras or commentaries from other movies?

You know, I think because I know so much about how movies are made, I don't really go to the features. But my husband and I both read The Talented Mr. Ripley, and then we watched the movie again, and if we had had time, we would have gone to the features, because we would have liked to see why they changed the book. It depends on how much time you have, but I think it's great that it's there to revisit. I never want to tell how something was done; I want it to be seamless and magic. But there's so many people who already know so much, why not give them all the information? It's a great business, and it's great to share some of our secrets.