Actress Sigourney Weaver (Alien, Gorillas in the Mist, Galaxy Quest) has been awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 81st Venice International Film Festival set to take place August 28 to September 7, 2024.
Three-time Academy Award nominated and BAFTA and Golden Globe winning actress Sigourney Weaver has created a host of memorable characters in films ranging from Ripley in Alien to Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist to Gwen/Tawny in Galaxy Quest. Up next, she will star in the black comedy Dust Bunny alongside Mads Mikkelsen and The Gorge with Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy.
Sigourney Weaver, in accepting, said, “I am truly honored to receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement from the Biennale di Venezia. To be gifted this award is a privilege I share with all the filmmakers and collaborators I have worked with throughout the years. I proudly accept this award in celebration of all who have helped bring these films to life.”
Regarding this award, Venice International Film Festival Director Alberto Barbera declared: “An actress of the caliber of Sigourney Weaver has few rivals. Strengthened by her significant theatrical training, she won over the great film-going public with Alien, directed by Ridley Scott, soon becoming an emblematic figure of the 1980s. During the course of that decade, she forged the image of a heroine unprecedented in the action film genre, able to victoriously rival the male models who, up to that point, had dominated epic and adventure movies. Not satisfied with having blazed the trail for powerful female actors, the actress ceaselessly continued her search for a personal identity. She constantly challenged her persona through choices that ranged from genre movies to comedies, art-house films, and children’s movies, side-stepping labels that sought to restrict her to the role of a triumphant icon of the Reagan era. As an authentic collaborator, rather than simply a malleable instrument in the hands of a director, she has contributed to the success of movies by James Cameron, Paul Schrader, Peter Weir, Michael Apted, Roman Polanski, Ivan Reitman, Mike Nichols, Ang Lee, and many others, each time imposing the mark of a complex personality — at times contradictory but always authentic — onto her own charismatic presence. Endowed with a remarkable temperament, able to move with delicacy yet without fragility, she has created the image of a woman who is self-assured and determined, dynamic and resolute; at the same time, with endlessly different shadings, she allows her intensely magnetic, feminine sensitivity to filter through.
The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement is just recognition for a star who has built bridges between the most sophisticated art-house cinema and movies that engage with the public in a frank and original way, all the while remaining true to herself.”