“I think she knew I would enjoy it,” the “Alien” actress suggested.

Sigourney Weaver’s daughter told her to play a ‘really awful woman’ in iconic family film

"I think she knew I would enjoy it," the "Alien" actress suggested.

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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December 27, 2025 2:34 p.m. ET

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Sigourney Weaver in London on Dec. 11, 2025. Credit:

Karwai Tang/WireImage

- Sigourney Weaver said her daughter, Shar, recommended she play the "really awful woman" antagonist in 2003's *Holes*.

- Weaver said she thinks that her daughter "knew I would enjoy it."

- The *Avatar* actress believes her character "was so damaged [and] probably had some PTSD that was still active in her."

Sigourney Weaver received sage career advice from an unlikely source.

The *Alien* actress recently told *Vanity Fair* that her daughter, Shar, recommended that she play the villain in the 2003 movie *Holes*.

"*Holes* is funny because my daughter, who was about 8, was given *Holes* to read in school," Weaver remembered. "One day, she came up to me and she said, 'Mom, there's this really awful woman in my book and you should play her.'"

The *Gorillas in the Mist* actress said that she was touched by the recommendation. "I remember being very proud of her that she was able to separate from the book and be able to say to me, 'There's a really awful person and you should play her, Mom,'" Weaver recalled. "'Cause I think she knew I would enjoy it."

Sigourney Weaver and Shar Weaver in Venice on Aug. 28, 2024.

Daniele Venturelli/WireImage

In the film, Weaver portrayed Warden Louise Walker, the head of the juvenile detention program at Camp Green Lake. The warden forces a group of children including Stanley (Shia LaBeouf) and Zero (Khleo Thomas) to dig holes as part of her secret plot to uncover an outlaw's lost treasure.

"The warden is quite a creation," Weaver said of her character. "I mean, really nightmarish from a children's point of view."

The actress said that a key piece of the warden's backstory made her empathize with the cruel antagonist. "What I found so unexpectedly touching about the warden was that she had spent her childhood looking for that treasure, doing what she had the boys doing non-stop," Weaver recalled. "The idea that she was so damaged probably had some PTSD that was still active in her. So she was driven to continue to look."

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The *Working Girl* star explained how that backstory inspired her to urge director Andy Davis to afford the warden one tiny victory at the film's conclusion. "That's why in the last scene, I think before she's taken away, I said to Andy, 'You have to let her see what they've found, and then she can rest,'" Weaver said. "And so then I did get to see [the treasure] in the back of the car."

Sigourney Weaver in 'Holes'.

Phil Bray/Walt Disney/courtesy Everett Collection

Weaver can currently be seen in *Avatar: Fire and Ash*, in which she plays Kiri, the teen Na'vi daughter of her previous character Grace. Kiri's relationship with her quasi-adoptive brother, Spider (Jack Champion), has romantic undertones, but Champion told ** that their on-screen rapport felt natural despite the unusual dynamic of Weaver playing a CGI character who's 60 years younger than her.

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"Sigourney is Sigourney, she's so good at acting, and we're literally in a performance-capture Volume where it's gray," Champion told EW. "We know that our imagination is our main weapon. So when she's acting, it is very unique, but it was so easy 'cause she's such a good actress. I just reacted off her. So, I guess, it wasn't that hard, and it wasn't insane. After the first couple days, maybe it was unique, but I really think that pretty much immediately it was just so easy."**

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