Sigourney Weaver Interview: "Just relax and let your mind go blank," she tells him, then adds with withering nonchalance: "It shouldn't be hard for you."

This is the Weaver they know and love: spikey, brittle, intelligent, the Weaver who could take on the universe's most dangerous alien and live to make the sequel.

SHOOT: She's an original with a lot of rebellious, but sensible energy. The world could do with a lot more Sigourneys.

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk One of the first things that people think about when the name Sigourney Weaver pops into conversation, along with her braininess and patrician elegance, is her height. You only have to think of the scene in Infamous when she dances with Toby Jones playing Truman Capote, in which his head reaches somewhere around her navel. Then there's the story about how she acquired her name. She was christened Susan, but when she was 14 she decided it didn't suit a person like her who was 6ft tall in her shoes. So she seized on the name Sigourney, having spotted it in The Great Gatsby. Sigourney seemed to her to be long and curvy: much more appropriate for someone her size. She smiles in affirmation. "And I haven't got parts in conventional love stories because of my height." The upside of such blatant discrimination is that the directors she has worked with, she says, have all been what she describes as "wild men. And I'm very grateful for that."