SIGOURNEY Weaver and survivors of a South American plane crash took centre stage at Spain's answer to the Oscars this week, the Goya Awards – and one film netted 12 prizes out of its 13 nominations.
Sigourney Weaver gave a speech in fluent Spanish when she received her International Goya Award from her old director colleague, J. A. Bayona (this photo and the final picture from the official awards ceremony site, Premiosgoya.com)
For the past three years, this huge red-carpet gala celebrating Spanish cinema has also decorated an international silver-screen legend in a brand-new award category – last year, this went to Juliette Binoche (Chocolat, The English Patient, Trois Couleurs: Rouge), and in 2022, amid rumours of her possibly becoming the next 'Almodóvar Girl', to Cate Blanchett (Charlotte Gray, Notes on a Scandal).
And the International Goya in 2024 went to a Hollywood icon who is certainly not Alien to the Spanish language – Sigourney Weaver proved this as she gave her acceptance speech fluently in the native tongue of the awarding nation.
Born Susan Alexanda Weaver to an NBC television reporter dad and a British actress mum, Ghostbusters star Sigourney, 74, was visibly overwhelmed, and told the applauding audience that they 'were making her feel like a queen'.
She had previously been nominated for a Goya in the Best Supporting Actress category for her rôle in A Monster Calls, based upon the Patrick Ness novel of the same name and directed by J. A. Bayona.
And as well as presenting Sigourney with her statuette, Bayona spent most of the evening welded to the stage as his own film, Sociedad de la Nieve ('Society of the Snow') swept the board.
Sociedad de la Nieve, a tale of survival in the snow, nets a dozen trophies
Made for Netflix, the hard-hitting production is based upon a true story and one that has become legendary worldwide: When Uruguayan Air Force flight 571, carrying a team of rugby players to Chile, crashed in the Andes in 1972, only 29 of the 45 passengers and crew survived. They then had to face the elements to stay alive long enough to be rescued, in some of the harshest and most hostile conditions on earth, and resorting to extreme measures to cheat death – in the end, only 16 of the 29 lived to tell the tale.
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