Dutch postcard by Film Freak Productions, no. FA 283, 1992. Photo: Carolco International N.V. Publicity still for Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron, 1991).

Austrian-born muscleman, Hollywood star and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) started his career as a bodybuilder, who won several European contests and international titles. ‘The Austrian Oak’ moved to the US and was a millionaire at 21. He achieved stardom in the documentary Pumping Iron (1977) and established himself as an action star with Conan the Barbarian (1982). As the murderous android title character in The Terminator (1984) and its sequels, Schwarzenegger became a bona fide box-office draw and the cigar-chomping strongman went on to star in interesting box office hits as Predator (1987), Total Recall (1990) and True Lies (1994). His most notable role of the new millennium was political - as governor of California.

Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger was born in 1947 in the village Thal near the small Austrian town of Graz. His parents were Gustav and Aurelia Schwarzenegger. His father, was an alcoholic police chief and one-time member of the Nazi Party, who clearly favoured Arnold's brother over his gangly, seemingly less athletic younger son. Gustav is reported to have beaten and intimidated Arnold and pitted his two boys against one another. Schwarzenegger would later refuse to attend the funeral of his father, who died in 1972, or his brother, who was killed in a car crash in 1971. Gustav wanted Arnold to become a soccer player, but the 15-year-old opted for weight training. He frequented the local cinemas to see bodybuilding idols such as Reg Park and Steve Reeves on the big screen. In 1961, Schwarzenegger met former Mr. Austria Kurt Marnul, who invited him to train at the gym in Graz. During his army service in 1965, he won the Junior Mr. Europe contest. Arnold went on to win several European contests. This was his ticket to the U.S., where he billed himself for body-building exhibitions as ‘The Austrian Oak’. At age 20, he won the first of five Mr. Universe titles, and three years later, he captured his first Mr. Olympia title. He would win the title a total of seven times. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “Though his thick Austrian accent and slow speech patterns led some to believe that the Austrian Oak was shy a few leaves, Schwarzenegger was, in fact, a highly motivated and intelligent young man. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in business and economics, he invested his contest earnings in real estate and a mail-order bodybuilding equipment company.” At 21, Schwarzenegger was a millionaire via shrewd investments and decided to try acting. Producers were impressed by his physique but not by his last name, so he made his film debut with a dubbed voice and as Arnold Strong in Hercules in New York (Arthur A. Seidelman, 1970), a low-budget parody of the sword and sandal epics of Arnold’s youth. He reverted to his own name for Stay Hungry (Bob Rafelson, 1976), with Jeff Bridges. For his part, he was awarded a Golden Globe for New Male Star of the Year. Then he achieved stardom as ‘himself’ in Pumping Iron (George Butler, Robert Fiore, 1977) about a group of men training for the Mr. Olympia contest. Arnold had already won the title six times before, and was training for his seventh victory before retiring to fully pursue his acting career. In The Villain (Hal Needham, 1979), a cartoon-like Western parody, he played ‘Handsome Stranger,’ exhibiting a gift for understated. In 1980, he starred opposite Loni Anderson in the TV biopic The Jayne Mansfield Story (Dick Lowry, 1980) as Mansfield's husband, Mickey Hargitay.

Arnold Schwarzenegger established himself as an action star with his role as the barbarian warrior Conan in the formidable Conan the Barbarian (John Milius, 1982) and its inferior though enjoyable sequel, Conan the Destroyer (Richard Fleischer, 1984). As the murderous android title character in The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984), Schwarzenegger became a bona fide box-office draw. Made on a relatively modest budget, the high voltage action / science fiction thriller was incredibly successful worldwide, and began one of the most profitable film franchises in history. Schwarzenegger's catchphrase "I'll be baaaack" became part of popular culture around the world. Then followed two of his best action films: Predator (John McTiernan, 1987) - an entertaining marriage of action and science fiction about a team of commandos hunted by an extra-terrestrial warrior in a South-American jungle, and Paul Verhoeven's wild and sublime Sci-Fi action film Total Recall (Paul Verhoeven, 1990). Total Recall, loosely based on the Philip K. Dick story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, tells the story of a construction worker who goes for virtual vacation memories of the planet Mars, but an unexpected and harrowing events force him to go to the planet for real - or does he? Stuart Wood at IMDb: “Total Recall is without doubt Arnold Schwarzenegger's best movie since The Terminator. Arnold fits perfectly in the role of Doug Quaid (definitely his best acting in a movie to date) the confused construction worker and Ronny Cox provides his usual evil plotting arch bad-guy. The impressive visual effects are worth the movie's $100million price tag, and Paul Verhoeven proved that, as with Robocop and Starship Troopers, sci-fi is where he does his best work.“ As Danny De Vito's unlikely pacifistic sibling in Twins (Ivan Reitman, 1988), Schwarzenegger received the praise of critics. In the police comedy Kindergarten Cop (Ivan Reitman, 1991), Schwarzenegger played a hard-bitten police detective who found his true life's calling as a schoolteacher. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron, 1991), wherein ‘Arnie’ exercised his star prerogative and insisted that the Terminator become a good guy, was the most expensive film ever made up to its time and became one of the biggest moneymakers. The actor's subsequent action films were equally as costly. Hal Erickson: “sometimes the expenditures paid off, while other times the result was immensely disappointing - for the box-office disappointment Last Action Hero (1992), Schwarzenegger refreshingly took full responsibility, rather than blaming the failure on his production crew or studio.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger is a rock-ribbed Republican despite his former marriage to JFK's niece, Maria Shriver, with whom he has four children. He was appointed by George Bush in 1990 as chairman of the President's Council of Physical Fitness and Sports, a job he took as seriously and with as much dedication as any of his films. A much-publicized investment in the showbiz eatery Planet Hollywood increased the coffers in Schwarzenegger's already bulging bank account. Schwarzenegger then added directing to his many accomplishments, piloting a few episodes of the TV series Tales From the Crypt as well as the TV-movie Christmas in Connecticut (1992) with Dyan Cannon, a remake of the classic Christmas in Connecticut (Peter Godfrey, 1945) with Barbara Stanwyck. Schwarzenegger bounced back from the disastrous Last Action Hero (John McTiernan, 1990) with True Lies (James Cameron, 1994), which was one of the major hits of that summer. Following the success of True Lies, Schwarzenegger went back to doing comedy with Junior (Ivan Reitman, 1994), co-starring with Emma Thompson. The film met with critically mixed results, although it fared decently at the box office. Schwarzenegger continued to alternate action with comedy with Eraser (Chuck Russell, 1996) and Jingle All the Way (Brian Levant, 1996). The latter proved to be both a critical bomb and a box-office disappointment. Schwarzenegger returned to action films with Batman & Robin (Joel Schumacher, 1997), in which he played the villain Mr. Freeze. Unfortunately the film proved to be a huge critical disappointment.

The turn of the century found Arnold Schwarzenegger's film career and box office prominence into decline. He made two millennial paranoia films, End of Days (Peter Hyams, 1999) and The 6th Day (Roger Spottiswoode, 2000), both failures. Collateral Damage (Andrew Davis, 2002) also failed to do well at the box office. Fans rejoiced when Arnold resumed his role as a seriously tough cyborg in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (Jonathan Mostow, 2003). Jeremy Wheeler at AllMovie: “What T3 does effectively is bring back the mix of highly intense action, character-driven humor, and technological wizardry that the big screen had been lacking for more than a decade since Terminator 2: Judgment Day. There's a direct understanding of the series core dynamics, and once things kick in, there's no doubt that you're back in Terminator-land. Arnold Schwarzenegger eases back into the role effortlessly, bringing an understanding to the lovable cyborg that goes beyond simple line delivery and stoic screen presence.” Though Schwarzenegger made a cameo Around the World in 80 Days (Frank Coraci, 2004), his most notable role of the new millennium was political. In 2003 he became the governor of California, and ‘The Governator’ served two terms until 2011. In 2010, Schwarzenegger he was among the all-star cast of action-movie icons in The Expendables (Sylvester Stallone, 2010), an action thriller following a group of tough-as-nails mercenaries as they deal with the aftermath of a mission gone wrong. He reprised his role for The Expendables 2 (Simon West, 2012) and The Expendables 3 (Patrick Hughes, 2014). The Last Stand (Kim Jee-woon, 2013) was his first leading role in 10 years. More recently he returned to the Terminator franchise in Terminator Genisys (Alan Taylor, 2015) and he produced and acted in the dramatic horror film Maggie (Henry Hobson, 2015).

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), David Montgomewry (IMDb), Stuart Wood (IMDb), Jeremy Wheeler (AllMovie), Biography.com, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

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Dutch postcard by Film Freak Productions, Zoetermeer, no. FA 346. Photo: Columbia Pictures. Publicity still from Dracula (Francis Coppola, 1992).

Dracula (Francis Coppola, 1992) or Bram Stoker's Dracula is an American gothic horror film directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. It stars Gary Oldman as Count Dracula, Winona Ryder as Mina Harker, Anthony Hopkins as Professor Abraham Van Helsing, and Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker.

This 1992 version of Dracula is closely based on Bram Stoker's classic novel. The film opens with Count Dracula's vow to rise from his grave and take revenge on a God who allowed his beloved to die while he defended Him on the battlefield. In the 1890s, Count Dracula conducts business with a London firm. When his first consultant goes mad, the young barrister Jonathan Harker is assigned and sent to a gloomy castle in the mists of Transylvania to arrange Dracula's real estate acquisition in London. Harker is captured and imprisoned there by the centuries-old vampire. Count Dracula travels to London, inspired by a photograph of Harker's fiancée, Mina Murray. He believes that she is the reincarnation of Elisabeta, his long lost love. In Britain, Dracula begins a reign of seduction and terror, draining the life of Mina's closest friend, Lucy Westenra. Lucy's friends gather together and call for Professor Van Helsing to come and help. They realise that this is not a simple battle against a disease of the blood.

Francis Coppola gave the film rich colours in the scenery and elaborate costumes that bring the goth out of the film. He also worked well with shadows and backlighting. He gave the film the feel of an old silent film but with modern standards, thanks to some wild special effects. The costume design by Eiko Ishioka created a new image for the Count and for the first time freed him from the black cape and evening wear the character had become associated with since Bela Lugosi's portrayal in Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931). The haunting and romantic score was composed by Wojciech Kilar. And Gary Oldman made a very memorable Dracula. His performance is ranging from creepy and disturbing to romantic and charming. However, there are also scenes that are over the top and overacted.

Dracula (1992) was theatrically released in the United States to positive reviews. The film was seen as a game-changer, which established a tone and style that redefined cinematic vampires. It created a host of new vampire film tropes, like retractable fangs, vampires turning into literal bat-men, and a steampunk aesthetic. The film grossed $215 million against a production budget of $40 million. It was nominated for four Academy Awards and won three for Best Costume Design, Best Sound Editing, and Best Makeup. The closing credits theme 'Love Song for a Vampire', written and performed by Annie Lennox, became an international success.

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

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Dutch postcard by Film Freak Productions, Zoetermeer, no. FA 544. Photo: Paramount Pictures Corp. Angelina Jolie in Lara Croft Tomb Raider (Simon West, 2001).

American actress Angelina Jolie (1975) won an Oscar, for her role in Girl, Interrupted (1999). She gained international acclaim with her role as video game heroine Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and established herself as one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood with the Tomb Raider sequel The Cradle of Life (2003). Jolie proved her status as an action movie star with the blockbusters Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) and Wanted (2008). She received rave reviews for her roles in A Mighty Heart (2007) and Changeling (2008), for which she received an Oscar nomination. Forbes named her Hollywood's highest-paid actress in 2009, 2011, and 2013.

Angelina Jolie was born Angelina Jolie Voight in Los Angeles, in 1975. She is the daughter of actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand. She is the sister of director James Haven. When Jolie was six months old, her father left the family and she moved to upstate New York with her mother and brother, and ten years later the family returned to Los Angeles, where 11-year-old Jolie decided to become an actress and enrolled at the prestigious Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute. Although she had a happy childhood, Jolie became depressed in her teens. In high school, she was bullied by her peers for her thin body and full lips, and she cut herself. Jolie had no personal contact with her father for many years and had the surname Voight removed from her name in 2002. Jolie and Voight reestablished contact after her mother, with whom Jolie had a very close relationship, died of ovarian cancer in 2007. After a short-lived career as a fashion model, Jolie began her film career in 1993 with a starring role in the low-budget film Cyborg 2. Some notable films from this period include her first Hollywood production, Hackers (1995), where she met her first husband Jonny Lee Miller, and Foxfire (1996), where she began a relationship with co-star Jenny Shimizu. In 1998, Jolie won a Golden Globe for her role in the biographical television film George Wallace (1997). That same year, she played the tragic photo model Gia Marie Carangi in the biographical television film Gia. Critics praised Jolie's performance as the lesbian, heroin-addicted Carangi; she won a Golden Globe for the second year in a row and her first Screen Actors Guild Award. She appeared in Playing by Heart (1998), an ensemble production which also starred Sean Connery, Gillian Anderson and Ryan Phillippe. The film in general and Jolie's performance in particular were well received. Next, Jolie appeared in Pushing Tin (1999) as the seductive wife of Billy Bob Thornton, whom she would marry the following year. Jolie then worked with Denzel Washington in the crime film The Bone Collector (1999). The film grossed $151 million worldwide but received poor reviews. Jolie also played the psychopathic Lisa Rowe in the biographical film Girl, Interrupted (1999) with Winona Ryder. Girl, Interrupted marked Jolie's breakthrough in Hollywood and she won her third Golden Globe, her second Screen Actors Guild Award, and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance. The summer of that year saw the release of her first blockbuster, Gone in 60 Seconds, in which she played the ex-girlfriend of car thief Nicolas Cage. The film brought in $237 million internationally, making it her best-attended film to that point.

Angelina Jolie achieved international superstar status with her role as video game heroine Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001). Although Jolie was widely praised for her physical performance, the film received mainly negative reviews. The film was nevertheless an international success with sales of $275 million and launched her global reputation as a female action film star. Jolie appeared as Antonio Banderas' sensual but deceitful mail-order bride in Original Sin (2001). In 2002, she played an ambitious journalist who is told she will die within a week in Life or Something Like It. Both films received poor reviews, but Jolie's performance was again well received by critics. In 2003, Jolie reprised her role as Lara Croft in Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life. The sequel, although not as profitable as the original, had international sales of $156 million. Later that year, she appeared in Beyond Borders, a film about development workers in Africa. The film reflected Jolie's interest in development aid but was critically and financially unsuccessful. In 2004, Jolie appeared alongside Ethan Hawke as an FBI agent in the thriller Taking Lives. She also provided the voice of the fish Lola in the DreamWorks animated film Shark Tale and had a small role in the science fiction/adventure film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. That same year, Jolie played the role of Olympias in Alexander, a biographical film about the life of Alexander the Great. The film was poorly attended in America, which director Oliver Stone attributed to its depiction of Alexander's bisexuality, but was a success internationally with sales of $139 million. Jolie starred in only one film in 2005, the action comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith, where she met Brad Pitt. The film, which tells the story of a bored couple who discover that they are both hit men, was one of the biggest successes of 2005, with sales of $478 million worldwide. Jolie then appeared in Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd (2006) as the neglected wife of a CIA agent played by Matt Damon. In 2007, Jolie appeared in A Mighty Heart as Mariane Pearl, the widow of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl. For her performance, Jolie received a fourth Golden Globe nomination and a third Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. That same year, Jolie also played the mother of Grendel in the motion-capture-created epic film Beowulf. In 2008, Jolie played the hit woman Fox in the action film Wanted, alongside James McAvoy and Morgan Freeman. The film was well-received by critics and was an international success with sales of $342 million. She also provided the voice of Tigress in the DreamWorks animated film Kung Fu Panda, which became her best-selling film to date with sales of $632 million worldwide. That same year, Jolie appeared in Clint Eastwood's truth-based drama Changeling, about American Christine Collins (played by Jolie) who is reunited in 1928 not with her kidnapped son but with a boy who had claimed to be her son. Jolie received a second Academy Award nomination, a fifth Golden Globe nomination, and a fourth Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for her role.

Angelina Jolie's performance as the title character Evelyn Salt in Salt (2010) had many reviewers calling her the female James Bond. Jolie would also provide the voice of Tigress in the children's animated film Kung Fu Panda and its sequel, before taking on her next big hurdle: stepping behind the camera. Jolie directed and produced the war drama In the Land of Blood and Honey (2012), a tragic love story that takes place during the Bosnian War. The film's uncompromising depiction of the war atrocities that marked the conflict caused some stir in Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia, but her choices were largely celebrated by Bosnians, as well as most critics in the U.S. and Europe. Jolie returned to acting in 2014, playing the title character in Disney's Maleficent, which would prove to be Jolie's biggest live-action hit, passing the box office totals for Mr. & Mrs. Smith, taking in $600 million. She also continued to direct and produce films including Unbroken, First They Killed My Father, and By the Sea, In 2019 she starred in the Marvel movie The Eternals. In addition to her acting career, Jolie has been active for the UN refugee agency UNHCR since 2001, first as a Goodwill Ambassador and since 2012 as a Special Envoy. For her efforts, she received an honorary Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George by Queen Elizabeth II. After marriages with actors Jonny Lee Miller (1996-1999) and Billy Bob Thornton (2000-2003), Jolie had been in a relationship with actor Brad Pitt since 2004, with whom she has six children. In 2016, the couple separated and Jolie filed for divorce.

Sources: Rebecca Flint Marx (AllMovie), Wikipedia (Dutch) and IMDb.

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Dutch postcard by Film Freak Productions Ltd., Zoetermeer, no. FA 467. Photo: United Artists. Leonardo DiCaprio as Phillippe in The Man in the Iron Mask (Randall Wallace, 1998).

Leonardo DiCaprio played a double role as the title character and the villain in The Man in the Iron Mask (Randall Wallace, 1998). The picture uses characters from Alexandre Dumas's Musketeers novels with Jeremy Irons as Aramis, John Malkovich as Athos, Gerard Depardieu as Porthos, and Gabriel Byrne as D'Artagnan. The film story is very loosely adapted from some plot elements of the novel 'The Vicomte de Bragelonne'm the epilogue of the Musketeers novels. Gerard Depardieu was nominated for the European Film Academy Achievement in World Cinema Award for his role as Porthos. DiCaprio won a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Screen Couple for his interactions as twins in the film.

The Man in the Iron Mask (Randall Wallace, 1998) centers on the aging four musketeers, Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and D'Artagnan, during the reign of King Louis XIV and attempts to explain the mystery of the Man in the Iron Mask. This man is a secret twin brother to the cruel King Louis XIV of France. While Paris is starving, the King is more interested in money and bedding women. When a young soldier dies for the sake of a shag, Aramis, Athos, and Porthos band together with a plan to replace the king by his twin who was hidden at birth, then imprisoned for years behind an iron mask. All that remains now is D'Artagnan, will he stand against his long time friends, or do what is best for his country? This plot is less related to the original Dumas book than to the flamboyant film version starring Douglas Fairbanks, The Iron Mask (Alan Dwan, 1929), and the version directed by James Whale, The Man in the Iron Mask (James Whale, 1939) with Louis Hayward. Like the 1998 version, these two adaptations were also released through United Artists.

The novel and the filmed versions of the tale have some differences in how they portray the royal twins and the plot to switch them. In the 1929 silent version, The Iron Mask starring Douglas Fairbanks as D'Artagnan, the King is depicted favorably and the twin brother as a pawn in an evil plot whose thwarting by D'Artagnan and his companions seems more appropriate. In the 1998 film, the King is depicted negatively while his twin brother is sympathetically portrayed. D'Artagnan's loyalties are torn between his King and his three Musketeer friends. He is also revealed as the father of the twins, as well as being dedicated to the interests of France. Many historical persons and events depicted in the film are heavily fictionalised, as declared in an opening narration. Louis XV was the great-grandson and successor of Louis XIV. He was born in 1710, and the events of the film take place about half a century before his birth. D'Artagnan's death in the film is inconsistent with biographic fact. The character is based on Charles de Batz-Castelmore d'Artagnan, a captain of the Musketeers of the Guard, who was killed in battle during the Siege of Maastricht (1673) - an event that concludes the Dumas novels, in which D'Artagnan is killed while reading the long-awaited notice of his promotion to the supreme command. Louis XIV had a real-life brother, Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, who is not depicted in the film and was not the King's twin. Set in 1662, the film portrays the king as unmarried. The historical Louis XIV married his first wife Maria Theresa of Spain in 1660. They remained married until her death in 1683.
Notwithstanding the peace and prosperity alluded to at the film's conclusion, Louis XIV spent most of the remainder of his reign at war.

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

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Dutch postcard by Film Freak Productions, Zoetermeer, no. FA 461, 1997. Photo: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. Poster image of Alien - Resurrection (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997) with Sigourney Weaver and Winona Ryder.

American actress Sigourney Weaver (1949) rose to international fame with her role as Ellen Ripley in the Alien saga. After her breakthrough in the Science Fiction blockbuster Alien (1979), she became one of Hollywood's major female stars during the 1980s and 1990s. Weaver often plays strong, independent, and driven women. She was nominated for an Oscar for Aliens (1987), Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey (1988) and Working Girl (1988), and her tour-de-force performance in the Broadway play 'Hurlyburly' (1984) earned her a Tony Award nomination. Weaver has actually won more than ten film awards, including two Golden Globes and a BAFTA Award.

Susan Alexandra 'Sigourney' Weaver was born in New York, in 1949. Weaver is the daughter of television producer and president of NBC Pat Weaver and British actress Elizabeth Inglis. She changed her name to 'Sigourney' at the age of 14, after a character in F. Scott Fitzgerald's book 'The Great Gatsby'. She graduated from Stanford and Yale, in the same class as Meryl Streep. In the 1970s, she acted in experimental and classical plays, including those by her former classmate Christopher Durang. Because of her height (she is 1.82 metres), she was often ignored by most producers and directors. In 1976, Weaver got a role in the soap opera Somerset. The following year, she made her film debut: she appeared for six seconds in Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977). However, it made many people sit up and take notice. She had her first starring role in Madman (Dan Cohen, 1978) starring Michael Beck. Her breakthrough followed in Ridley Scott's Alien (1979). The part of Ellen Ripley became her most famous role and made Weaver one of the greatest actresses of the moment. She continued her career with drama films such as Eyewitness (Peter Yates, 1981) and The Year of Living Dangerously (Pewter Weir, 1982), with Mel Gibson. In 1984, she played her first comic role as Dana Barrett in Ghostbusters (Ivan Reitman, 1984). In 1986, the first sequel to Alien was released. In Aliens (James Cameron, 1986), Weaver portrayed Ripley as an intelligent, powerful woman. The film was an even greater commercial success than the original and she was rewarded for her role with her first Oscar nomination. She was also nominated for an Oscar for her roles as the animal rights activist and zoologist Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist (Michael Apted, 1988) and her delicious performance as a double-crossing, power-hungry corporate executive in the comedy Working Girl (Mike Nichols, 1988). She missed out on the award all three times but did receive Golden Globes for the latter two films.

Sigourney Weaver reprised the role of Dana Barrett in the sequel Ghostbusters II (Ivan Reitman, 1989) and played Rebecca Gorin in the reboot Ghostbusters (Paul Feig, 2016). Weaver also reprised the role of Ellen Ripley in the films Alien³ (David Fincher, 1992) and Alien: Resurrection (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997) with Winona Ryder, as well as in the game Alien: Isolation (2014), the latter of which marks the actress' return 17 years after her last appearance in the franchise. Weaver collaborated with Ridley Scott again, appearing as Queen Isabella in 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) and appeared in the Roman Polanski–directed Death and the Maiden, in a major role opposite Ben Kingsley. For her role in The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, 1997), she received her fourth Golden Globe nomination and won a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress. In 1999, she co-starred in the hilarious Science Fiction comedy Galaxy Quest (Dean Parisot, 1999) with Tim Allen and Alan Rickman. Then followed a decade in which she continued to appear in films but also had multiple voice roles in animated films, including The Tale of Despereaux (Sam Fell, Rob Stevenhagen, 2008) and the Pixar films WALL-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008) and Finding Dory (Andrew Stanton, 2016). She also worked in several documentaries, such as the BBC series Planet Earth (2006) and The Beatles: Eight Days a Week (2016). During the 2010s, she made a major comeback in the cinema with supporting roles in the blockbuster Avatar (2009), which marked her reunion with James Cameron, and in the historical blockbuster Exodus: Gods and Kings (Ridley Scott, 2014), starring Christian Bale, for which she reunited with Ridley Scott. She made a lasting return with the Sci-Fi thriller Chappie (Neill Blomkamp, 2015), the fantasy film A Monster Calls (Juan Antonio Bayona, 2016), and the TV mini-series The Defenders (2017). Last year, she returned as Dana Barrett in Ghostbusters: Afterlife (Jason Reitman, 2021). Sigourney Weaver married director Jim Simpson in 1984, with whom she had a daughter in April 1990.

Sources: Wikipedia (English, Dutch and French), and IMDb.

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