CURTIS: There are not many women who worked with Jim Cameron, as we did, who didn’t marry him. And you’re about to work with him again.

WEAVER: [laughs] But there’s still time for us to marry him. He’s only been married five times. Surely he can make it an even seven.

CURTIS: [laughs] Well, he’s delicious, and I had the best time I ever had on a Jim Cameron movie [True Lies, 1994]. It was the single most freeing experience as an actor I’ve ever had. And, of course, in the midst of it there was this humungous circus that he conceived. By the way, I remember the car I was in on the Ventura Freeway, when I looked up at a huge billboard by Universal, and all it said was, “In space no one can hear you scream” [the tag line for Alien]. I thought that was the single greatest ad line I’d ever heard in my life, and it scared the shit out of me. I’ve still never seen it all the way through, just bits and pieces.

WEAVER: You haven’t seen Alien?

CURTIS: I am not good under that kind of circumstance.

WEAVER: Well, neither am I. But it’s so good to talk to someone who loves Jim the way I do, because he’s misunderstood in the industry, somewhat. He is so generous to actors.

CURTIS: He loves actors.

WEAVER: With acting, for some reason, he doesn’t think he can do it, and he leaves us alone.

CURTIS: But, Sigourney, he can’t do it. And the truth is he can do every other job. I’m talking about every single department, from art direction to props to wardrobe to cameras, he knows more than everyone doing the job. But he can’t act. And therefore he is in thrall of actors.

WEAVER: He thinks we can do anything. He’ll let you try anything. There are very few geniuses in the world, let alone in our business, and he’s certainly one of them. I remember how vulnerable your character was in True Lies and so powerful, and very unique in the lexicon of his work.

CURTIS: It was beautiful and very emotional. It’s about a marriage. Jim believes in marriage; he believes in family.

WEAVER: Only someone who believes in it would be married five times.

CURTIS: I’m from a family of multiple marriages, so I was actually going to say that you and I have a lot in common. We’re both married to our first husbands.

WEAVER: [laughs] So far.

CURTIS: Tell me about this movie that you’re working on now.

WEAVER: It is written and directed by Neill Blomkamp, who did District 9. I’m the CEO of this tech corporation, and Hugh Jackman and Dev Patel are in it. And what I love about Neill’s work is that his stories are small human stories. But what’s interesting about Neill’s movies is that they’re set in the future but they’re so incredibly timely that it feels like maybe in the present in the next dimension. It feels like it’s happening now. The universe is very recognizable, in many ways. Chappie is terribly funny, incredibly moving, and also it has its action moments, but it’s resolutely set in the very near future, because I think robots are about to take over everything. And so I play not necessarily one of the good guys, but a person who’s very representative of our time right now. And we just had the most wonderful time, we tried everything 40 different ways, and it was just such an incredible pleasure to work with him. We were in South Africa, and, I mean, I always have a good time when I work, but I particularly enjoy working with Neill. Like Jim, I think he probably knows how to do every single thing technically. He’s a great artist, and he can probably invent whatever’s needed. I think that’s what I really dig about science fiction these days—we’ve caught up to it in a way. It’s no longer about people with huge brains. Now it’s really much more, as Jim says, the nature of being human. What it is to be human in society. How to retain one’s humanity in society. And Chappie is very much about, What does it means to be human? And is that something that only humans can have? So it’s a very interesting, and I would assume, having just seen bits of it, a highly entertaining piece of work.