Ellen Ripley is the heroine of the Alien films, and, along with Ash Williams, one of only two characters on our list of icons who are famous for fighting the monster rather than being one. Played by Sigourney Weaver across four films from 1979 to 1997, Ripley began as a warrant officer on a commercial space tug and became the template for the modern horror survivor: practical, stubborn, often the only person in the room willing to follow the rules, and absolutely unwilling to die. The American Film Institute ranks her the eighth greatest hero in film history.
At a glance
| Franchise | Alien |
| First appearance | Alien (1979) |
| Creators | Dan O’Bannon (screenplay) and Ronald Shusett (story with O’Bannon); script revised by producers Walter Hill and David Giler. Directed by Ridley Scott. |
| Portrayed by | Sigourney Weaver (Alien, 1979; Aliens, 1986; Alien 3, 1992; Alien Resurrection, 1997, as the clone Ripley 8; voice in the game Alien: Isolation, 2014) Elizabeth Inglis (Ripley’s elderly daughter Amanda, cameo in the extended cut of Aliens) Andrea Deck (voice, Alien: Isolation – The Digital Series, 2019) |
| Role | Heroine and survivor; her opponent is the Xenomorph |
| Weapons of choice | Flamethrower, motion tracker and a grappling-hook gun (1979); M41A pulse rifle taped to a flamethrower, and a cargo power loader (1986); her wits throughout |
Origin story and backstory
In Alien (1979), Ripley is the warrant officer aboard the Nostromo, a commercial towing ship heading home to Earth with a crew of seven and a cat named Jones. Woken early to investigate a signal from a nearby moon, the crew finds a derelict alien ship and a chamber full of eggs. When a creature attaches itself to Kane’s face, Ripley refuses to let him back aboard, citing quarantine rules. She is overruled, and the decision dooms the crew. By the end she is the last one standing, blows up the Nostromo, and still has to face the creature alone on the escape shuttle.
Ripley was not always going to be a woman. O’Bannon and Shusett wrote the crew so that every part could be played by a man or a woman, with a note in the script saying so. Ridley Scott first imagined Ripley as a man; according to one account, studio head Alan Ladd Jr. asked, “why can’t Ripley be a woman?” Weaver, then little known on screen, got the part.
From survivor to legend
Aliens (1986) wakes her after 57 years adrift. Nobody believes her story, and in the extended cut she learns that her daughter has died of old age. When a colony on the same moon goes silent, she returns as an adviser to a unit of Colonial Marines and becomes a surrogate mother to Newt, the colony’s last survivor. Alien 3 (1992) strands her on a prison planet with a new creature and a terrible secret, and ends with her sacrifice. Alien Resurrection (1997) brings her back 200 years later as a clone, Ripley 8, whose DNA is mixed with the alien’s. Later films have not featured Weaver’s Ripley, and fans still debate the darker turns of the third and fourth films.
Critics have long celebrated what makes Ripley different from the screaming victims of earlier monster movies. She is competent rather than lucky, her bond with Newt is the emotional engine of Aliens, and her real enemy is often the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, which keeps putting profit ahead of her crewmates’ lives. That combination made her a feminist icon and a model for decades of horror final girls.
Iconic moments
- Quarantine (1979): Ripley’s refusal to open the airlock for Kane is the moment the film tells us who is going to survive.
- Self-destruct (1979): Ripley races the countdown through the steam-filled corridors of the Nostromo, then tries and fails to abort it.
- The shuttle (1979): Just when she thinks she’s safe, Ripley realizes she is not alone.
- “Get away from her, you bitch!” (1986): Ripley steps out of the cargo bay in a power loader to fight the Alien Queen. Weaver had to get it in a single take.
- Into the hive (1986): With a rifle and a flamethrower taped together, Ripley goes back into the nest alone to rescue Newt.
- The furnace (1992): Alien 3 ends with one of the boldest decisions in a franchise film: Ripley chooses to die rather than let the company have the creature inside her.
Appearances
Films in release order
- Alien (1979)
- Aliens (1986)
- Alien 3 (1992)
- Alien Resurrection (1997)
Games, books and what never happened
Games: Weaver returned as Ripley’s voice for the first time in 17 years in Alien: Isolation (2014), whose story follows her daughter Amanda, and played her in the game’s two add-on missions set during the 1979 film. Books: Ripley appears in the tie-in novels Out of the Shadows and River of Pain, among others. Cancelled: Director Neill Blomkamp announced a fifth Alien film in 2015 with Weaver attached, but Ridley Scott confirmed in 2017 that it would not be made. The prequels and the later film Alien: Romulus (2024) and series Alien: Earth (2025) tell other stories.
Trivia and behind-the-scenes facts
- Weaver earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for Aliens, a landmark at the time for a science fiction or horror role.
- Across the series Weaver was also nominated for a Golden Globe and for a BAFTA as most promising newcomer, and she won the Saturn Award for Best Actress for Aliens.
- Weaver’s mother, Elizabeth Inglis, appears as Ripley’s elderly daughter in the extended cut of Aliens.
- The power loader in Aliens was too heavy to move on its own. A stuntman dressed in black operated it from behind.
- Alien opened in limited release on May 25, 1979, and was added to the National Film Registry in 2002. Aliens followed on July 18, 1986.
- The alien creature that Ripley spends her life fighting was designed by Swiss artist H. R. Giger.
- Alien Resurrection ends with Ripley 8 looking down at Earth and admitting, “I’m a stranger here myself.”
- Each of the four films had a different director: Ridley Scott, James Cameron, David Fincher and Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
- An Audio-Animatronic Ripley appeared in the Alien scene of The Great Movie Ride at Disney’s Hollywood Studios from 1989 to 2017.
- Empire magazine ranked Ripley No. 9 on its list of the 100 greatest movie characters in 2008 and No. 5 in 2015, the highest-ranked female character both times.