Sigurni Viver (Sigourney Weaver / Ripli) debitovala je 1979. godine u filmu Ridlija Skota, OSMI PUTNIK koji je doživeo veliki uspeh. Ponovila je ulogu Ripli u još uspešnijem filmu Džemsa Kamerona, ALIENS, za koji je nominovana za Oskara, 1986.godine. Konačno kao Ripli, pojavljuje se i filmu ALIEN 3, Dejvida Finčera, kome je takođe bila i koproducent. Viverova je rođena i školovana u Njujorku, a studirala je na Stanfordu i Jelu. U karijeri je izbalansirala rad u pozorištu i rad na filmu. Na Brodveju je igrala u komadu HURLYBURLY, za koji je bila nominovana za nagradu Toni. U svojoj bogatoj filmskoj karijeri, Viverova je igrala najrazličitije uloge u skoro svim žanrovima GHOSTBUSTERS, DEJZ, GODINA OPASNOG ŽIVLJENJA, SMRT I DEVOJKA, LEDENA OLUJA samo su neki od njenih filmova.

Sigourney Weaver, de son vrai nom Susan Alexandra Weaver, est née le 8 octobre 1949 à New York. Son père a été directeur de la chaîne de télévision NBC et sa mère, d'origine anglaise, est une ancienne actrice que l'on a notamment aperçue dans Les 39 marches d'Alfred Hitchcock. Elle a un frère nommé Trajan. A 14 ans, après la lecture de Gatsby le magnifique de Scott Fitzerald, elle décide de changer son prénom pour celui d'un personnage secondaire du roman : Sigourney, un prénom rare et plutôt masculin. Sigourney Weaver passe donc son enfance et son adolescence dans un milieu bourgeois, culturel et ouvert qui lui permet de faire la connaissance de la jet set de New York.

She began using the name Sigourney in 1963, after a character in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. During the 1970s Weaver studied theater at Yale University, where she appeared in original plays by friend and classmate Christopher Durang.

• Partial filmography - Sigourney Weaver シガーニー・ウィーヴァー

  1977: Annie Hall 1979: Alien 1981: Eyewitness 1982: The Year of Living Dangerously 1984: Ghostbusters 1985: Une femme ou deux 1986: Half Moon Street 1986: Aliens 1988: Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey 1988: Working Girl 1989: Ghostbusters II

  1992: Alien3 1992: 1492: Conquest of Paradise 1993: Dave 1994: Death And The Maiden 1995: Copycat 1995: Jeffrey 1997: Alien: Resurrection 1997: The Ice Storm

• tillness in the eye of the 'Storm' Powerful drama shows disintegration of 1970s families with slow grace BY MARGARET A. McGURK The Cincinnati Enquirer   It may sound odd to describe a movie about wife-swapping suburbanites and their drug-abusing kids as ''fragile,'' but that's exactly how The Ice Storm feels. The film, adapted from a novel by Rick Moody, is sketched with subtlety and refined detail worthy of Ingmar Bergman. The time in late 1973, when the country was shredded over Watergate and fallout from the Vietnam War; even the affluent haven of New Canaan, Conn., feels the effects. Mr. Lee and his company immersed themselves in artifacts of the era to evoke both place and time with pitch-perfect sets, costumes and music. Then, he wraps the story in a literal ice storm that blankets the movie in dread. Kevin Kline plays Ben Hood, a man without a clue, substituting behavior for life. Ben acts the part of a sophisticate, a family man, a husband and a sexual adventurer, but he is, at heart, lost. In Janey Carvey, the neighbor with whom Ben dallies, Sigourney Weaver finds a monstrous vacuum that seeks distraction in perfunctory sex. Joan Allen as Ben's wife, Elena, is a portrait of frustration and crushed rage. While the adults use sex as a crutch and a diversion, their stunned, yearning children grasp at one another for connections the adults have forgotten how to sustain. In fact, the children turn out to be the fulcrum of the story, a chore borne well by the young actors who play Ben's son Paul (Tobey Maguire) and daughter Wendy (Christina Ricci), and Janey's sons Mikey (Elijah Wood) and Sandy (Adam Hann-Byrd). The kids reject their parents even as they mimic their sins. The children's stumbling attempts to challenge and hang onto their families translate into actions that are self-destructive and touching at the same time. Mr. Lee (Sense and Sensibility, Eat Drink Man Woman) takes a chance in framing this dark tale in subtle terms. For all the extremity of the characters' actions, the movie is for the most part very quiet. It moves with a slow grace, like dreaming. Occasionally, it slows to a sleepwalk. But its delicacy runs at extreme opposition to the harsh, loud, fast tone of most American movies -- and offers a refreshing reminder of the power of stillness. For all its chilly elegance, The Ice Storm is a story about human hunger. It ends with a family huddled together, like refugees, waiting for a train that carries someone who will close their frail circle. Their unspoken need is as real, as poignant and powerful as a baby's cry. Like a secret garden, The Ice Storm holds treasure for those inclined to look deep -- and listen. The Ice Storm Rating :  (R; sex scenes, nudity, teen drug use, profanity) Cast: Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Joan Allen. Director: Ang Lee. Time: 112 minutes. Playing at: The Mariemont. Sigourney Weaver cracks the whip as neighbor Janey Carver inThe Ice Storm. In what is at once the funniest and most disturbing scene in Ang Lee's magnificent The Ice Storm, two New England teenagers stumble toward a sexual experience, although it's not clear that either really wants to. The girl is 14, the boy is 15, and they've petted previously but never with much urgency and always, it seems, without even a trace of pleasure. As the youngsters almost numbly negotiate who will now touch whom and where and for how long, the girl suddenly finds a Nixon mask, which she slips over her head. Negotiations continue until clothes are unbuttoned and the boy is lying between the girl's jeans-clad legs. And all the while, she leaves the Nixon mask on. The scene reverberates with symbolism, of course. It is 1973, and the chilled gray weather, the messy den, the children joyless in their sex play and the haunting visage of America's most disreputable president all conjure a nation that has sacrificed its soul on the altar of material prosperity and self-indulgence. Adapted from Rick Moody's novel, The Ice Storm is the story of two 1970s families in New Canaan, Conn., and by extension their entire suburban community and even America as a whole. Both fathers, Ben Hood (Kevin Kline) and Jim Carver (Jamey Sheridan), are prosperous businessmen who have been able to provide their families wonderful, spacious homes situated on huge, tree-shaded lots. Neither Ben's wife, Elena (Joan Allen), nor Jim's wife, Janey (Sigourney Weaver), works, but both are discontent, though in different ways. Sixteen-year-old Paul Hood (Tobey Maguire) attends an elite prep school in New York City. His sister, Wendy (Christina Ricci), attends school in New Canaan along with Mikey (Elijah Wood) and Sandy (Adam Hann-Byrd) Carver. The two families are next-door neighbors, and their lives are intertwined in a number of ways. Ben is having an affair with Janey; Wendy is the girl in the Nixon mask, Mikey her partner. This is the time of waterbeds, leisure suits, flared pants and moral rot. The Hoods and the Carvers have everything they could conceivably want except a sense of purpose. Then on a late fall night when the Connecticut coast is rocked with the worst ice storm in a generation, the children slip away when they're supposed to stay home, and the parents go to a key party, a polite name for a wife-swapping lottery. Extracting Moody's rich detail, screenwriter James Schamus and director Lee have crammed this film with meaning. Nothing is random. All text points to subtext. Nixon sweats and prevaricates from every TV screen. Parents cheat. Wendy steals candy. Paul smokes dope in his dorm room. Mikey and Wendy pig out on junk food. Though she hardly needs to, Elena shoplifts makeup from the local drugstore. The world is full of dishonesty and disloyalty. Whereas only a half-generation earlier, friendship meant steering clear of a pal's girl, Paul's prep school roommate routinely strives to score with any girl Paul finds attractive. Such is the final result of the sexual revolution. Friendship has become much less important than sexual conquest. Sex, of course, is a central issue here. But all the magic, all the warmth, all the personal elements have been stripped away. Janey and Ben couple on a gray afternoon while Elena runs errands. But their sex has all the heat of Jello. At some point, there is presumably a spasm of physical pleasure, but no connection is made. Janey could just as well be using a stud service. Afterwards, when Ben tries to talk about a concern at work, Janey chides him for boring her. Often, we gather, and perhaps not to soil sheets on which Jim will later sleep, Janey and Ben copulate in Sandy's bedroom. The coolness of their illicit union is reflected in the sexual experimentation of their children. They are all looking for something they're clearly not finding in the Pandora's box of the new sexual freedom. Elena knows what's going on between Ben and Janey, and at first she turns, haltingly, to the church. We learn that she's attended services recently but hasn't continued. And no wonder: the pastor has hair down to his shoulders and speaks in phrases as hip as his outfits. God has become as passe as '50s haircuts. Pastor Philip Edwards (Michael Crumpsty) seems more interested in becoming Elena's lover than her spiritual counselor. He doesn't seem to have a wife, but that doesn't keep him from showing up at the key party. Repelled but directionless, Elena tries to cope by regressing. She envies her 14-year-old daughter and takes to riding a bicycle. Jim makes a comparably adolescent response. He runs away from home, figuratively if not literally. He spends days at a time on business trips, but he's so disconnected from his family that his sons don't realize when he's gone. Eventually, Elena and Jim draw together in sad desperation and resort, like teenagers, to sex in a car. In a series of images, Lee reminds us of ice's brittleness. Under sudden pressure, it shatters like glass. Drain a family of its warmth, and it cannot hold together. Janey has become so cold in her pursuit of impersonal pleasure that her family is poised to fragment. She moves from a neighbor's husband to another's young adult son. And though she exhibits at least superficial concerns for her children, they are withering in the frost. Bright, handsome, likable and athletic, 15-year-old Mikey uses drugs and escapes into distracted vacancy. Sandy seems even more lost. Lonely and aimless, he blows up all his toys with firecrackers. Questioned about it by Wendy, he shares his fantasies of the treasure of new toys he'll get a few weeks hence at Christmas, new toys he looks forward to destroying in fantastic new ways. Perfunctorily performing her maternal duties, Janey directs Sandy to make noise with a whip instead of cherry bombs, whereupon, left unsupervised as always, Sandy begins to whip the blossoms off a large potted hibiscus. The ultimate price of Janey's chilly negligence will be tragedy, though it's unclear there's enough heart left in her to long care. Bleak as all this sounds, however, Lee insists on the possibility of redemption. The only real sexual urgency portrayed in the entire film rises between Ben and Elena, husband and wife coupling in the afternoon like the lovers they once were. Perhaps they can stop their slide down the icy slope of self-indulgence. Perhaps their children can be saved. Ben insists that Paul come home for a family meal at Thanksgiving. Before dining, Ben invites his daughter to say grace. And even though the room is filled with tension and faintly concealed acrimony, there's a residual of love there as well. Things have gone bad between Ben and Elena. But there was obviously once something better, something that might be rediscovered and nursed back to health. Ben and Elena aren't providing the discipline and the nurturing that their children need, but they've instilled in Paul and Wendy something essential: brother and sister clearly love each other. Whereas Mikey and Sandy seem hollow, Paul and Wendy exhibit a moral core. Wendy waxes indignant at Nixon's clumsy cover-up of despicable crimes. Oddly, we can even see her core of decency in the sex games she plays with Sandy, whom she treats with great gentleness and evident concern. Sandy is still just a little boy, and she wishes to be just a little girl with him. Her shocking overture, "You show me yours, and I'll show you mine," is the challenge of a grade school child, not an invitation to sexual contact. Wendy yearns for that earlier time when Ben and Elena acted like adults, and after she's caught in a sexual act with Mikey, she wants her father, literally, to carry her home. Paul shows a comparable substance. He remains a virgin in an atmosphere of rampant teenage sexual activity. And though he has a boy's natural hunger for sexual experience, he wants that something more that involves interacting with a person and not just the interplay of sexual organs. He's grown fond of a bright classmate named Libbets Casey (Katie Holmes), but when she overindulges in alcohol and drugs one night (activities he's tried to dissuade), he refuses to take advantage of her. Instead, he returns home to his family, striving to keep his curfew. He is caught in the ice storm, but he makes it home where all the members of his family await his return in the rising light and gradual thaw of a new day. Hope springs eternal. The Ice Storm is that rarest of recent cinematic creatures -- an American movie that dares to think of itself as a work of art.

Galaxy Quest
--Planlos durchs All
(Galaxy Quest)

GENRE: Komödie

DARSTELLER: Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, Sam Rockwell, Daryl Mitchell, Enrico Colantoni, Robin Sachs, Patrick Breen, Missi Pyle u.a.

REGIE: Dean Parisot, USA 1999

Filmlänge: 102 Minuten

Vier Staffeln lang, von 1979 bis 1982, zog die Crew des NSEA-Raumschiffs "Protector" ihre Uniform an und zog aus zu spannenden und nicht selten lebensgefährlichen Missionen "da draußen im All".

Dann wurde die TV-Serie abgesetzt.

Heute leben die 5 Stars der alten Sci-Fi-Serie "Galaxy Quest" vor allem von ihren Auftritten bei Conventions vor hunderten von hingebungsvollen und kenntnisreichen Fans, die es schon auch mal wundert, dass Jason Nesmith, der den Commander Peter Quincy Taggart spielte, sich auf "seinem" Raumschiff weniger gut auszukennen scheint, als sie, die 3-D-Modelle der "Protector" in ihren PC's haben.

Diesmal taucht allerdings auch eine ganz andere Art von Fan auf: Die Thermier, eine Spezies aus dem fernen Klatu Nebel, halten die TV-Übertragungen der "Galaxy Quest" für historische Dokumente und glauben, in Jason Nesmith einen echten interstellaren Commander, und in dessen vier von Nesmiths Allüren gänzlich genervten Kollegen echte Bordärzte, Computerexperten und Piloten vor sich zu haben.

Und die Thermier brauchen Hilfe: ihre Spezies steht kurz vor der Ausrottung durch die üblen Sarris. Und während Nesmith noch glaubt, an die Manager irgendwelcher künftiger Conventions geraten zu sein, findet er sich jenseits des Jupiter wieder, konfrontiert mit einer wirklich ekligen außerirdischen Lebensform.

Nach kurzer Verwirrung löst Nesmith diese Konfrontation, ist begeistert davon, endlich wieder der gefragte Held im Mittelpunkt des Geschehens zu sein und holt kurzerhand seine "Crew" hinterher, deren Begeisterung sich allerdings in sehr engen Grenzen hält.

"Kommunikations-Leutnant" Tawny Madison, eigentlich Gwen DeMarco, hatte damals die Rolle des blonden Girls auf der Brücke, deren Aufgabe darin bestand, den Kontakt zwischen Computer und Crew aufrechtzuerhalten. Und das ist auf diesem Raumschiff --einem 1:1-Modell der "Protector"-- nicht nötig, da der Computer die menschliche Sprache beherrscht.

Der reptilienartige "Bordarzt", Dr. Lazarus, eigentlich Alexander Dane, hatte für die Rolle damals auf immer von seinen Shakespeare-Ambitionen Abschied nehmen müssen und hat noch nie einem Menschen Erste Hilfe geleistet, geschweige denn einer außerirdischen Spezies.

Sergeant Chen, der Maschinist, eigentlich Fred Kwang, konnte in der TV-Serie damals mit einem Kaugummi und einem Nylonstrumpf einen Warp-Generator reparieren und wird dafür von den Aliens besonders verehrt --dabei hat er schon Schwierigkeiten, eine Chipstüte zu öffnen, ohne dass die Hälfte auf dem Boden landet.

Ohne Drehbuch, ohne Regisseur, dafür mit absolut überhaupt gar keiner Ahnung über das Reisen im Weltraum werden die Schauspieler auf das Weltall und dessen Bewohner losgelassen. Ihre einzige Hoffnung ist, dass die Knöpfe, die sie in der Serie damals gedrückt haben, um irgendetwas in Gang zu setzen, in dieser Real-Life-Reproduktion dieselben "Irgendwasse" in Gang setzen...

Heartbreakers Med Sigourney Weaver, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ray Liotta, Jason Lee, Gene Hackman. Max (Sigourney Weaver) og Page (Jennifer Love Hewitt) er et mor-datter svindler par, som lever af at lade moderen gifte sig med rige mænd, for senere at fange dem med bukserne nede med datteren, hvorefter de indkassere en pæn sum i skilsmissen. Men mens de er i gang med at svindle cigaretmillionæren William B. Tensy (Gene Hackman), møder Page den ultimative kæreste (Jason Lee) og snart sker det utænkelige - hun bliver forelsket. Ting som moral og samvittighed begynder at komme frem, og med en hævnfuld ex-mand på jagt efter dem, og en død mand i bagagerummet, bliver mor og datter nød til at se på deres underlige forhold til hinanden, for at beholde deres egne hjerter i et stykke.

Sigourney Weaver a következő Alien-filmről - Az Alien-tetralógia főszereplője kis költségvetésű filmet tervez a Fox stúdióval.

If you want to write to Mrs. Weaver, you might try the following addresses. However, none of them are her private address.

Sigourney Weaver - Voted in Empire's magazine as one of 'The Top 100 Sexiest Star in the Film History'

シガーニー・ウィーヴァー

本名はSusan Alexandra Weaver。父親はNBCテレビの社長も勤めたこともあるシルヴェスター・L・ウィーヴァー。母親は元女優のエリザベス・イングリス。スタンフォード大学で英文学を専攻し、その後、イェール・スクール・オブ・ドラマで演技の勉強し舞台に立つ。卒業後もオフ・ブロードウェイの舞台で活躍し注目される。映画デビューは76年“Madman”。77年には「アニー・ホール」にラスト近くの超端役で出演。本格的デビューを飾ったのはその後、彼女の代名詞ともなる79年の「エイリアン」。その作品で謎のエイリアンと戦う宇宙船乗組員リプリー役により一躍スターの道を歩き出した。以後はメジャー作に出演。86年、「エイリアン2」でこの手の映画ではめずらしくアカデミー主演女優賞にノミネート。88年にも、「愛は霧のかなたに」で主演賞、「ワーキング・ガール」で助演賞にダブル・ノミネートされる（ゴールデングローブでは両方を受賞）。私生活では84年、舞台演出家のジム・シンプソンと結婚。90年に母親となる。芸名の“シガーニー”は「華麗なるギャッツビー」の登場人物から取ったとか。

生年月日	1949年10月8日
出身地	アメリカ／ニューヨーク市

 

作品リスト

・ ヴィレッジ（2004）   ・ 穴/HOLES（2003）   ・ ハートブレイカー（2001）   ・ ギャラクシー・クエスト（1999）   ・ マップ・オブ・ザ・ワールド（1999）   ・ アイス・ストーム（1997）   ・ エイリアン4（1997）   ・ グリム・ブラザーズ/スノーホワイト（1997）   ・ コピーキャット（1995）   ・ 死と処女(おとめ)（1995）

 

穴/HOLES（2003）

先祖のおじいちゃんがヘマをしたせいで、呪いをかけられ、不幸の家系になってしまったと信じる少年スタンリー。彼はある日、運悪く無実の罪で捕まってしまう。そして、自分の潔白を証明することをあっさり諦め、少年矯正施設行きを受け入れる。しかし、そこは想像を絶する過酷なところだった。砂漠のど真ん中に建つその施設では、恐ろしい女所長が恐怖支配を行い、“人格形成のため”と称して、来る日も来る日も少年たちに大きな穴を掘らせていた。だがその“穴掘り”には、ある別の大きな企みがあったのだった…。ルイス・サッカーの傑作児童文学を豪華キャストで映画化した日本劇場未公開の痛快ファミリー・アドベンチャー。

(The Holes Ten Yards : A group of juvenile detention camp kids, forced to dig holes by a sadistic warden (Sigourney "Whip it!" Weaver), discover that a mob hitman (Bruce "Where has my career gone?" Willis) has been burying his victims bodies in the desert).

 

Sigourney Weaver Makes Surprise Return Engagement - March 05, 1998

Actress Sigourney Weaver, the Hasty Pudding Theatricals' Woman of the Year, returned to Cambridge last Sunday as an audience member.  Weaver, who received her Pudding Pot on Feb. 9, came to see the show with her husband, theater director Jim Simpson, and 8-year-old daughter Charlotte. Along with the parade that she grand-marshaled on the 9th, she was also treated to a half-hour preview of this year's Pudding production, Paradise Lost-and-Found: A Bermuda Love Triangle. She wanted to see the rest of the show, however, and purchased tickets through the Hasty Pudding box office (495-5205). Weaver also showed her appreciation to the company by purchasing a four-layer wedding-style cake, which was shared at the reception for their Tuesday charity performance for the Learning Center for Deaf Children. The icing inscription read: "Dear Stud Muffins, Break those beautiful legs! XXOO, Sigourney."

Long Live Sexy Women

Bone-inspiring babes beyond year 40

(with courtesy of Gettingit.com)

Erotic older women have become a titillating topic ever since Rene Russo, 45, started cooking up the celluloid in The Thomas Crown Affair. Experience is arousing and wrinkles are racy for anyone worshipping middle-aged goddesses. For the nonbelievers, I present a personal Top 10 pantheon of fabulous 43+ tasties.

Sigourney Weaver -- If you're wild for wiry, no-nonsensee dames who specialize in wasting alien monsters, "Siggy" is the 49-year-old lioness for you. Fools whine that Linda Hamilton deserves mention, but Weaver blows Ms. Terminator away in the "Looks Hot Carrying A Big Machine Gun" category. Her smoldering nihilism in The Ice Storm also suggests that she'll romp with lucky stiffs who find her car keys.

Isabelle Adjani -- I drool in francais when I voyeur thhis femme magnifique, who exudes teenage succulence at age 44. Ms. Adjani -- passionately displayed in Queen Margot -- inherited her exotic features from Algerian and German parents. My opinion: Daniel Day-Lewis was tres stupid to abandon Isabelle, after impregnating her with a son.

Anita Hill -- She's 43 and terminably prim, but I can't drink a Coke without wanting to park pubic hair on the can for her. I sympathize with her ex-employer's obsessions when I gaze at Ms. Hill's educated physique, and her gentle, litigious eyes. And when her soft, husky voice repeats the judge's filthy comments? SCHWWIING! Clarence Thomas trial transcripts are hotter than the Starr Report!

Susan Sarandon -- Tough, smart, and stacked at 52. Herr wet-eyed, warm-lipped visage exudes bedroom vulnerability even when she's pretending to be a nun in Dead Man Walking. I've loved her ever since her bosom bounced joyously in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. She's liberal too, in case you feel like saving the world after sex.

Imelda Marcos -- The ex-Miss Manila and parasitical &"Empress of the Phillipines" is a crooked, curvaceous old sex-cookie at 70. She's also back in politics, she was elected a legislative representative from her native district of Leyte. She's rich enough to maintain the best figure dirty money can buy, and foot fetishists can masturbate in her thousands of shoes.

Jane Fonda -- If you've ever sneaked a peek at youur mom's exercise videos, or seen her in the slinky Barbarella costumes, you've been lusting for "Hanoi Jane" for decades now. She's a firm, foxy 61, still campaigning for provocative issues, like birth control. The juiciest perk in a Jane fling would be cuckolding a billionaire -- Ted Turner might chop you up with an Atlanta Braves tomahawk.

Charo -- Sure, she's an irritating Spanish biimbo-blonde with her coquettish "cootchie-cootchie" come-ons, but her voluptuous 48-year-old geography is a harbor you happily hope to cruise your Love Boat into. If the lusty liner crashes, you can float ashore safely on her pontoon pectorals.

Grace Jones -- Perhaps she's actually a gay man or Carl Lewis' twin, or both, but so what? At 51, she can still break bricks on her butch butt, and crack skulls between her ripped quads. If you're lucky, you can rest your drink on her flat-top while you wrestle with her powerful lips.

Maggie Thatcher -- The "Iron Maiden" is a rippe, raunchy 74 now -- if you have submissive fantasies about getting your naughty bare bottom spanked by a mean old school-marm. Imagine her in a black bustier, cracking a bullwhip on the butts of the Argies or Irish!

Aung San Suu Kyi -- This 54-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate is a huge-hearted, articulate, tantrika-faced beauty -- still ravishing after six years of political imprisonment for spearheading the democracy movement in her native Myanmar (Burma).

Honorable Mention:

Elizabeth Dole -- Best 63-year-old legs in the 2000 prresidential race, even though she'll definitely lose to the coke-head. I don't understand why hubby Bob needs Viagra, unless he's got a war wound that was never revealed. If anyone has a heart attack humping Libby, she knows the Red Cross phone number.

Too "Immature" to Qualify:

Michelle Pfeiffer -- Imagine waking up with her pretty faace on a pillow beside you. Angels in heaven must resemble this blue-eyed, 42-year-old blonde.

Geena Davis -- She's studying archery at age 42; I wish I were the target of her long-legged, pouty-lipped intentions.

Hank Hyena is a columnist for SfGate.comand SfMetropolitan.com, and a frequent contributor to Salon.

Middle-Aged Lovers Jostle Onto the Screen

By: Ruth La Ferla
courtesy of New York Times, January 13, 2002

HE camera zooms in on the face of a woman, who, pressed to the bedsheets, is creased and wan with age. Her lover, hovering over her, shows his own ragged features convulsed in a fury of lust.

The scene, from the Australian movie "Lantana," a brooding mystery, is a carnal encounter meant to mirror those of moviegoers who, like the actors, are well past the blush of youth.

Played by Anthony LaPaglia as Leon, a detective, and Rachael Blake as Jane, his predatory girlfriend, the characters are only two in a growing parade of middle-aged screen lovers whose lined and loosening flesh are subjected on camera to the kind of steamy scrutiny usually reserved for the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Brad Pitt.

A spate of recent films, including "Sexy Beast," an English import, and American movies like "In the Bedroom," and "American Beauty," are novel, indeed almost shocking, in their refusal to pander to youth-loving cameras and audiences. Their subjects are not made up to look half their age; these actors show age spots, bulging bellies and softening jowls.

The films reflect a shift in demographics, playing to a growing population that is no longer young (under 30) but not old enough to store its erotic lives and fantasies in mothballs. Besides, these movies try to project an optimistic view of middle age as not a sad inevitability but as yet another of life's passages — and a sexy one at that.

Perhaps more surprising, the films' grittiness makes no concession to conventional marketing wisdom, which has long held that such subjects turn off audiences. "If someone was mature and sophisticated in the past," said Robert Sklar, a film historian and the author of "A World History of Films," "that person was maybe 30. Now he or she is 50."

John C. Cavanaugh, a provost at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and author of "Adult Development and Aging," agrees. "There has been a fundamental shift in attitude toward midlife and aging," he said. "We no longer think of midlife as downhill, or of sex as something specific to younger people. We are becoming more aware that both interest in sex and sexual activity continue well into late life."

In the last year or so that awareness was translated on the screen in "Sexy Beast," a crime caper intently focused on the sensual connection between a pulpy-looking bank robber and his 40-ish former wife, who was a porn star.

But "Sexy Beast" paled next to the French import "Under the Sand," in which Charlotte Rampling, 56 at the time the film was made, displays a torso that looks firm but worn as she sits astride a lover who appears to be roughly her age. In "Innocence," an Australian film that tests what is acceptable or believable on the screen, a couple of old lovers resume their long-ago affair — at the age of almost 70.

In "Town & Country," a vanity vehicle for Warren Beatty, Mr. Beatty, who is in his 60's (and is Ms. Bening's real-life husband), trades moist looks with 56-year-old Goldie Hawn, then collapses, sodden, into her arms. In "The Man Who Wasn't There," Ethan and Joel Coen's current film noir, Frances McDormand, who is 45, shows up as a hard-bitten small-town accountant who has an affair with her paunchy employer, a department store boss played by James Gandolfini, a poster boy for middle-aged pulchritude on the cable television hit "The Sopranos."

The conventional wisdom in Hollywood has it that women over 45 are the primary consumers of such fare. If that is true, said Bell Hooks, a feminist who has written extensively on film, "it stands to reason those women would want to see on screen a body that mirrors their own."

"What's more," Ms. Hooks added, "they want to see the heroine partnered with a lover whose imperfections mirror her own. That is what makes these movies marketable."

The audience's desire to see some semblance of themselves on screen may also account for a recent reversal of the hoary Hollywood formula, one that dictates that it must be the older man who beds the younger woman. Several new movies turn that notion on its head, featuring younger men who blatantly lust after women who could double as their mothers.

"Years ago," said Mr. Sklar, the film historian, "when a Joan Crawford or Bette Davis reached the age of Charlotte Rampling in `Under the Sand,' they became crones, grandmothers, witches, crazy people. In `Sunset Boulevard,' Gloria Swanson portrayed a raging hag, and at the time, she was 50."

In contrast, the contemporary gallery of middle-aged screen babes includes Lynn Redgrave, 58, who in "The Simian Line" plays a real estate broker sultry enough to compete with Cindy Crawford for the affections of Harry Connick Jr., who is 34. And in "Tadpole," which was unveiled on Friday at the Sundance Film Festival, a teen-age boy falls in love with his stepmother, played by Sigourney Weaver, and goes to bed with the equally ropey-looking Bebe Neuwirth.

These days movies compete with television. Even youth-oriented shows like "Dawson's Creek" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" have featured episodes in which middle- aged characters fog up the lens with their frank couplings.

Middle-aged sexuality is likewise a feature of cable shows like "Six Feet Under," which has Frances Conroy, an actress in her 50's, cavorting on camping trips with her grizzled boyfriend. To say nothing of "The Sopranos," in which Mr. Gandolfini's paunchy mobster lusts after his weathered therapist, played by Lorraine Bracco, and paws Annabella Sciorra, his 40-ish paramour.

Their no-holds-barred on-screen affair is not likely to raise eyebrows on a show that in its first season, in 1999, featured Junior, a 70-year-old Mafia capo, played by Dominic Chianese, lounging in bed with his overripe mistress, discussing oral sex.

At one time audiences might have found such fare repellent. No longer. Viewers may at last be ready to acknowledge, Ms. Hooks said, that "in reality most people's sex lives aren't pretty."

"Fantasy," she added, "has so dominated our lives that to see something that approximates the real takes away some of the shame that audiences may feel about the real."

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