Sigourney: My Stepson, My Lover

Aging actresses often get discouraged by the prospect of playing matronly parts. Of course, 52-year-old Sigourney Weaver looks anything but the M-word as a sultry stepmom in Tadpole (opening Friday). She laments that filming in digital video afforded "not enough lighting for a woman of my age... But what are you going to do?" Oh shush, Sigourney. You look faboo!

"I would say I'm most comfortable playing mother roles," says Weaver, who played Jennifer Love Hewitt's kinky mama in Heartbreakers. "They are certainly easier for me than any other role. I'm trying to become Donna Reed at my advanced age!"

Tadpole's plot — which casts Weaver as her 15-year-old stepson's secret crush — doesn't really bring to mind that wholesome '50s icon. In real life, Weaver's uninterested in romancing teenagers, though she quite fancies younger men. Her husband — director Jim Simpson — is seven years her junior.

"I think [our society] has a problem with age," she asserts. "It's much more conventional to have an older man and a younger woman. I personally was never for a second interested in older men. I only went out with men younger than myself."

Hmm... why might that be? "I think because I was so immature," she muses, "but I also thought it was more fun. The guys that I used to go out with weren't power crazy moguls. I was never interested in [dating for financial] security. I was never interested in being a rich hostess. I just couldn't imagine spending time with someone [older]; it didn't appeal to me at all."