Only thing that scares Alien star Sigourney Weaver is Scottish midge

Jul 13 2008 By John Millar

SIGOURNEY WEAVER has fearlessly battled the mother of all space monsters in the Alien movies.

And the actress kept her cool in real life when she was trapped on board a stricken aeroplane.

But the Hollywood A-lister has revealed the one thing that fills her with dread - the ferocious Scottish midge.

Sigourney's husband, theatre director Jim Simpson, has Scottish roots and for ages the couple have been talking about visiting his family homes in Glasgow and Forfar.

But only thing that puts the star of hit animated sci-fi movie Wall-E off coming to Scotland is the prospect of being savaged by our national beasties.

Sigourney, 58, said: "Just today I was told not to go to the Highlands in July and August because of these little creatures. I am not scared of flying but I am scared of midges."

It is a startling admission for a star who is famous for fighting much bigger beasties in her heroic role as space pilot Ripley in the classic Alien series - which has the tagline, 'In Space, no one can hear you scream'.

She has also shown plenty of pluck in a potentially catastrophic real-life situation on board a crippled aircraft.

The actress said: "All the oxygen masks had dropped down and there had been a big sound at the back of the plane - something had popped open, she recalls.

"We had to dive 10,000 feet so we could get down to somewhere where our brains wouldn't pop.

"Then we had to fly round for a couple of hours like this in this broken plane.

"I was curiously calm but what could you do anyway?

"So maybe there is a tiny bit of Ripley that I was able to find in myself but I was glad we were not flying over open water because that would have frightened me.

"But because we were over an agricultural area I thought that if the worst came to the worst we could land this baby in some fields.

"The stewardesses were running up and down asking if we had enough water, trying to seem calm and they were such terrible actors."

It probably helped that Sigourney is extremely comfortable with air travel and even loves turbulence.

She said: "It's like surfing. Turbulence is just waves in the air and I love to know I am in the air.

"What I hate is when the plane is just there, that is so boring."

Flying fan Sigourney has even done a spot of piloting a plane for real when she took the controls of a seaplane during a trip over the mountain range near Montreal.

She added: "I know how to keep a plane upright on the air but landing it would be pretty frightening."

Despite putting on a brave act in the Alien movies, Sigourney admitted she would be lost in space.

She said: "Ripley is a pilot with the right stuff but if I suddenly found myself in space I'd want to know when the next ship back was.

"I would be afraid to have anyone depending onme for their survival. That would make me nervous."

Next year will be the 30th anniversary of Alien and Sigourney is returning to the world of science fiction. Apart from Wall-E, in which she is the voice of the spaceship computer, she will be seen in epic sci-fi drama Avatar.

The film reunites her with director James Cameron - of Titanic fame - who worked with her on Alien.

She said: "I am returning to the genre in quite a spectacular way with Avatar.

I think it is going to be a wonderful movie."

And she is just as thrilled to have been part of Wall-E, which is one of her favourite films.

She said: "I agreed to do it after I was sent the script last winter.

"I think it was actually one of director Andrew Stanton's fantasies to have Ripley doing the voice of the spaceship's computer. But I am a huge Pixar fan - I would read the phone book for them."

Sigourney is marking some big events in her life - and may finally make it to Scotland.

Next year she and husband Jim will celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary and their 18-year-old daughter Charlotte is about to start university.

Sigourney said: "We are embarrassed that Charlotte is now going off to college and we have still never made the trip to Scotland.

"We have to visit Forfar and Glasgow because my husband's family were from those two places - apparently Glasgow is a great city."

Wall-E is released on July 18.

WALL E'S TURN ON

THE birth of Wall-E happened 15 years ago.

Over lunch Pixar whiz kids Andrew Stanton, John Lasseter, Pete Docter, and the late Joe Ranft came up with the idea of a film about a robot left on Earth.

Stanton said: "It was this Robinson Crusoe kind of character.

"Mankind had left and somebody forgot to turn the last robot off and he didn't know he could stop doing what he's doing."