Sigourney Weaver reunites with her "Aliens" director James Cameron, more than 20 years later, with his new film "Avatar." Though sworn to secrecy, Weaver revealed that she is playing both a live action and animated character, and that Cameron has hardly changed.

"It isn’t that different I suppose," Weaver said. "It’s wonderful to work with old friends again and he hasn’t made a movie for 10 years, and he’s so excited about doing this one. He’s shooting every shot himself and he’s surrounded himself with the most brilliant young technicians, pushing the edge of the performance capture envelope and by the time we finish this movie, the technology will be unrecognizable I’m sure, and the actors that we’re with are wonderful people. It’s funny, it’s a huge movie [but] it’s actually a very small family kind of experience."

Cameron's idea may be wild, but Weaver trusts the Oscar-Winner. "If Jim Cameron was not Jim Cameron and came to me in the parking lot somewhere and said, ‘I have this great idea about a foreign planet, and it’s a rainforest,' I’d be like, ‘Mm, he’s crazy!’

For Weaver, a veteran of the old school animatronic aliens controlled by puppets, Cameron's new motion capture style is disconcerting. "Coming from the theatre I’m at home on an empty stage using my imagination and he’s really given us so many images of what these worlds really look like, so I think he’s doing everything he can to make it work for us and I think it’s going to be okay. It’s not like he put a potted plant next to me, and said, ‘All right, react to that.’ He’s trying to make it work for us, too. He knows that that has to happen."

And in true Cameron fashion, Weaver will play another strong female character. "I think I can say that. It’s a wonderful part. It really is."