Sigourney Weaver

The role wasn't written for a woman. Early drafts of Alien left Ripley's gender unspecified, and the writers insisted on casting an unknown so audiences couldn't predict who'd survive. She auditioned at 28 with almost no film credits and got paid $35,000.

James Cameron wanted her back for Aliens badly enough to bluff salary negotiations by floating Schwarzenegger's name to her agent. She got $1 million plus profit points and a Best Actress nomination, the first ever for sci-fi. Hollywood didn't know what to call that. By Alien Resurrection, her salary hit $11 million, equal to the entire production budget of the original. The franchise didn't make her a star so much as it proved the category existed.

Playing a 14-year-old Na'vi at 73 required sitting in on high school classes and learning parkour; at 75, she took on Prospero at the West End to mixed notices. Venice handed her a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement in 2024, only the third American actress to receive it after Jane Fonda and Jamie Lee Curtis.

She's said the sexism in Hollywood killed her dream of directing, and that studios won't cast women over sixty in action films. She doesn't seem to have taken that advice. Three Oscar nominations and zero wins hasn't stopped James Cameron from building a franchise around her.

Her Yale drama teachers told her she didn't have the talent for acting (Meryl Streep was in the same class). At 14, she'd already renamed herself after a minor character in The Great Gatsby, already taller than most of her classmates and done with Susan.

At her Ghostbusters audition, she got on all fours and howled like a dog to convince Ivan Reitman she could play Dana Barrett, then rewrote the character's occupation from model to cellist and suggested the possession plot that solved the third act. She's spent nearly 30 years as honorary chair of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, which tracks for someone who treats every role like fieldwork.