Sigourney Weaver Says Her Daughter Gave Her the Best Career Advice

Sigourney Weaver has revealed that one of the smartest pieces of career advice she ever received came from an unexpected source: her young daughter.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, the Alien star shared how her daughter, Shar, helped guide her toward playing the villain in the 2003 film Holes.

At the time, Shar was around eight years old and had been assigned Holes to read in school. One day, she approached her mother with a blunt but thoughtful suggestion.

“There’s this really awful woman in my book,” Shar told her. “You should play her.”

Weaver said the moment stayed with her. What moved her most wasn’t just the suggestion, but the maturity behind it. Her daughter was able to separate her real-life mom from a fictional character — and clearly believed Weaver would enjoy the challenge.

“I was very proud of her,” Weaver recalled. “I think she knew I would enjoy it.”

In the film, Weaver plays Warden Louise Walker, the ruthless boss of Camp Green Lake, a juvenile detention center where boys are forced to dig holes all day under the scorching sun. The digging, it turns out, is part of the warden’s secret plan to uncover buried treasure once linked to her family.

From a child’s perspective, Weaver admits, the character is terrifying.

“The warden is quite a creation,” she said. “Really nightmarish from a children’s point of view.”

But as an actor, Weaver looked deeper. She found empathy in the character’s backstory — particularly the fact that the warden herself had spent her childhood obsessively digging for the same treasure.

“She was so damaged,” Weaver explained, suggesting the character carried unresolved trauma. “She was driven to continue to look.”

That emotional understanding led Weaver to make a specific request to director Andy Davis. She wanted the warden to have one small, human moment at the end of the film.

“I said, ‘You have to let her see what they’ve found, and then she can rest,’” Weaver recalled.

That suggestion made it into the final cut, giving the villain a brief glimpse of the treasure before she is taken away — a quiet payoff for a character driven by obsession.

For Weaver, the role proved memorable not just because of the character, but because it came from the honest insight of a child who knew her mother well.

Sometimes, the best career advice really does come from home.