Cinema: The Years of Living Splendidly

• Share

(4 of 4)

Except that life gave her two shots at her future husband. Jim Simpson, 30, was a child actor in his native Hawaii; at 17 he was earning $2,000 a week on the TV series Hawaii Five-O. A graduate of Boston University and the Yale School of Drama, Simpson met Sigourney in 1981 at the Williamstown, Mass., summer theater festival, where he is now a director. Nothing happened. Then in 1983, after conniving to invite him to a Halloween party, she snared her beau, and a year later they were married at Pat Weaver's Long Island yacht club. Two ministers, a woman and a man, performed the ceremony. As party favors the guests received washaway tattoos. A bagpipe and bongo drums underscored the service. "It was great fun," says Bill Murray, Weaver's co-star in Ghostbusters. "But then I've never seen Sigourney give a bad party."

The party's not over. It has just begun with Jim, who says of Sigourney, "She's very smart. She's very affectionate. I'm very lucky." There are children in their future. And a Durang; Chris and Sigourney will keep acting, writing and capering. Though Weaver says she would "play anything -- a broom, a mop" in a Woody Allen film, she wants to be more than a housewife's helper in other roles. "Usually women in films have had to carry the burden of sympathy, only coming to life when a man enters. Doesn't everyone know that women are incredibly strong?" Right you are, Sigourney. Anyway, no one would argue with a woman who patented perfection, then showed how to have a wonderful time in spite of it.