The real Sigourney 'I SCARE MYSELF!'

Filming Down Under, the panicked star needed to channel her butt-kicking character Ripley for courage

- Judy Kean

Sigourney Weaver has a well-earned reputation in Hollywood for playing tough characters, like the ruthless Ripley in the Alien movies.

But she reckons that in real life she’s a wimp who scares herself silly before going on set, worrying about everything that could possibly go wrong.

“I always get very nervous about a job before it starts,” she admits. “I actually anticipate all the things that can go wrong, which means that in the two or three weeks before starting a job, I’m quite miserable. But that’s just my way. I do that with everything. By the time I get there, I’m like, ‘Throw it at me! I’m fine.’ At least I can notice it now and go, ‘You’re scaring yourself. That’s not going to happen.’”

However, Sigourney, 73, admits she found it hard to shake her fear of deadly snakes when she recently filmed the Amazon Prime series The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart in Australia.

“Australians are quite proud of the fact they have the 10 most venomous snakes in the world, but I was quite terrified,” tells Sigourney. “Sometimes I try to find the Ripley in myself. I go, ‘Where is she?’”

The character she plays in The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is one of the strongest women she’s ever portrayed on screen, believes Sigourney. June, who takes in her granddaughter Alice after the youngster’s parents die, runs a flower farm that doubles as a refuge for women escaping domestic abuse.