INTERVIEW

The Hollywood icon opens up on gaining confidence in later life, her new-found love of gardening, and why she’s keeping her dreams of one day becoming a grandmother firmly in check

by COLE MORETON

She’ll soon be appearing as a grandmother on screen again in a mesmerising new drama called The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, but is this a role that Sigourney Weaver, 73, also plays in real life? ‘No, although I have a dog… but she’s not a grandchild. Sometimes I feel like she is,’ laughs Sigourney.

The Hollywood legend skips away from the question elegantly, referring to the greyhound – called Cosi Fang Tutti – that she shares with her husband of 38 years, Jim Simpson, at their homes in Manhattan and upstate New York. ‘I have a daughter who lives in New York, but my wonderful family of nephews and nieces are far away and now they all have children,’ she says. ‘My feeling is that I’m a far-away kind of aunt and that is very frustrating, because I can only interact with them in certain ways and see them when I can.’

Her daughter Charlotte is in her early thirties, but when I gently persist in asking whether playing a grandmother in The Lost Flowers has stirred up a longing to be one for real, she gives a very careful response: ‘Well, I try to keep those feelings in check because my offspring is very ambivalent about all that, with the world being the way it is.’ Her voice briefly tightens; this sounds like a subject that may be a little too close to home for her.

‘But another reason I cherish being with my nephews and nieces and their rather large families is that, as someone who has worked a lot in her life, I love being with my family and enjoying the strength of the family.’