Sigourney Weaver Once Revealed She Changed Her Name Because of Her Height
Actor Sigourney Weaver is known for her iconic contributions to cinema, which include projects like Alien, Ghostbusters II, and others. But the superstar is also a bit known for her height, as her physique would also make her stand out in certain films.
In the past, Weaver received some unwanted attention because of her height. This prompted the actor to change her first name to Sigourney.
Sigourney Weaver once felt she was too tall for Hollywood
It wasn’t all that easy for Sigourney Weaver to get her big break. Celeb Heights lists the star as 5 feet, -11 inches now, but at her peak she claimed -6 foot. This made it difficult for her to snag roles when she first started out.
“When I started, hardly anybody wanted to hire a woman who was six feet tall,” Weaver once said according to Toronto Sun. “Which man wants to spend their shooting days on the set on an apple box just to be able to look into my eyes?”
But the Ghostbusters: Afliterlife star being as tall as she is has also worked in her favor. The actor shared that her height helped her secure roles with more variety.
“I’m getting wonderful parts,” she once told Closer Weekly. “I was never the babe or the beautiful ingenue or the love interest, because I was too tall. I’ve always played interesting people, and that’s continued. It’s not like I suddenly have to figure out who I am.”
Sigourney Weaver changed her name to fit her height
Weaver wasn’t always confident about her height. Her insecurities stemmed from being teased at an early age about how tall she was.
“I do so wish I could have handled criticism better. I was constantly judged as ‘too tall’ or ‘too zany’. I did feel awkward and gawky. Even at 11, I was being shunned by normal-sized children,” she once told Britain’s The Sun(via Contact Music).
The Avatar star was eventually convinced that a name change was needed, which she found in one of literature’s most iconic novels.
“I was about -6ft tall and called Susie or Sue. I felt too tall to have a short name like that and saw ‘Sigourney’ in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book The Great Gatsby,” she continued. “I thought: ‘I will use it until I figure out what to do with my name.’ It became an in-joke with my family. My father started signing himself in letters to me ‘Drad’ instead of Dad, because I’d changed my name.”
Sigourney Weaver once offered to paint shoes on her feet to look shorter
The difficulty in landing certain parts sometimes made Weaver eager to make compromises. In an interview with Independent, the Galaxy Quest star revealed the clues she’d spot that indicated she wouldn’t be hired.
“Producers are short and I was never their sexual fantasy,” she said. “As for actors, if I enter a room and an actor stands up then immediately sits back down, I hear myself saying, ‘This job isn’t for me’.”
For another role, she came up with creative ways to decrease her height on film to secure a particular role.
“I once offered to paint my shoes on my bare feet to get one part because it made me appear shorter,” she admitted.
