Gale Anne Hurd
The producer legend on terminating the patriarchy.
Atrailblazing producer, Gale Anne Hurd’s credits include The Terminator (1984), Aliens (1987), The Abyss (1989), Tremors (1990), Terminator 2 (1991), Armageddon (1998) and The Walking Dead TV show, among many other generation-defining blockbusters. Having reinvented genre storytelling for screens big and small, Hurd talks to Teasers about humble beginnings and establishing girl power in the ’80s…
At what point did you believe the opportunity had arrived for a female producer to make it in Hollywood?
The interesting thing is that my mother and her four sisters all worked in film at MGM Studios, so I knew that there was a path to working in the film industry. However, I never knew there was a path to producing. That all changed on my first day of interviewing for a job with Roger Corman at New World Pictures…
You worked with Corman until you produced
The Terminator…
Roger was a great inspiration – he asked me what I wanted to do as a career, not as a job but as a career. I had a degree in economics and communications, and I said to him, “Roger, I would like to be a producer,” which he immediately
encouraged. Working with Roger was an eye-opener because women worked in every capacity at his company. The first film I worked on the set of was even directed by a woman – a low-budget horror movie called Humanoids From The Deep. The big surprise was leaving Roger and working at the major studios where women were generally not on the set or higher up in the ranks. It was a totally different playing field.
Talking about a different playing field, The Terminator changed everything for you. How did you know you had the right leading man with Arnold Schwarzenegger?
We needed a good actor who could also be larger than life. Character actors tend to become the character they are playing, but they might not be larger than life. However, that most certainly was the case with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Was James Cameron always going to direct the sequel to
The Terminator? Actually, when we were filming Aliens in London, we had been watching a series on British television at the time called Edge Of Darkness. We both thought the director of that, Martin Campbell, would be great for the sequel to The Terminator, so we set up a meeting with him. I can still remember the restaurant we all met in and, of course, we spoke with him about Terminator 2. Obviously, the sequel went in a different direction and Jim wrote and directed it himself, but I did get to work with Martin later, including on a great film we did in Australia called No Escape.
Sigourney Weaver received an Oscar nomination for her role as Ripley in
Aliens despite the Academy rarely recognising sci-fi or horror…
I think what people might not realise is Sigourney Weaver can literally play everything. When she was at Yale studying drama, it was at the same time as Meryl Streep was there. I remember Sigourney told me, “All of the great drama roles went to Meryl,” so she carved out a niche doing comedy, including in OffBroadway productions. And even though you don’t see that side so much in Aliens, it’s still there, and I think it makes her warm and accessible. When she is talking to Newt that warmth and accessibility is right there in her performance.
Did her performance in change things for actresses in Hollywood?
Aliens
Yes! And more than just her performance because what was groundbreaking for the time is that Sigourney asked for $1m to do the sequel and she would not take a penny less. That was monumental. She was the first actress to break the milliondollar barrier. She is just as tough and fair and as committed to being a fighter for women’s equality now as ever, but she started the idea that an actress was worth as much as an actor with Aliens, and thank goodness she did! CW & NH
ETA | OUT NOW / S11 OF THE WALKING DEAD IS CURRENTLY AIRING.
‘PEOPLE MIGHT NOT REALISE THAT SIGOURNEY WEAVER CAN PLAY EVERYTHING’