All About Jim Simpson? Who Is Sigourney Weaver's Husband

Sigourney Weaver and her husband, Jim Simpson, are a dedicated couple.

Both Weaver and Simpson attended Yale Drama School, but it wasn’t until 1983 that they met at the Williamstown Theater Festival in upstate New York. At the time, Weaver was starring in a play, and Simpson was directing the nonequity groups, as well as working as a bartender.

While Weaver admits she was smitten from the time she crossed paths with Simpson, she wasn’t sure a romance would ever come from their meeting. “He was so cute,” she told Interview in 2015, noting she “had a boyfriend at the time.” They reconnected after Weaver invited Simpson to a party she was throwing.

Weaver detailed their whirlwind romance to the outlet, saying six months after meeting she “asked him out to dinner, and three months later we decided to get married.”

The award-winning actress and the director wed on October 1, 1984, and nearly six years later, the couple welcomed their only child, Charlotte, who goes by Char, together.

So who is Sigourney Weaver’s husband? Here’s everything to know about Jim Simpson and his relationship to the Ghostbusters star.

Simpson was born and raised in Hawaii, where he was a child actor, according to TIME. It’s reported that he made $2,000 a week while working on Hawaii Five-O at age 17.

The director spoke about his upbringing in a January 2012 interview with Adam Szymkowicz, in which he reflected on how his Hawaiian roots are a major part of who he is as an artist.

“I realize that many of my values of theatrical performance come from my missionary Church upbringing in Honolulu,” he shared.

Simpson elaborated by saying that while he’s “a spiritual atheist New Yorker,” he’s “also very much a Keiki o ka Aina Congregationalist who favors Spartan settings and the congregation more than the minister’s sermon.”

Simpson also noted that he “grew up immersed in a Nisei neighborhood with Run Run Shaw movies and Samurai Flicks, surfing and eating Saimin.”

Throughout his multi-faceted career, Simpson’s directing credits have included Tales From the Crypt, Spice World and The Guys, in which he worked alongside both Weaver and their child, Charlotte.

In 1996, Simpson also co-founded The Flea theater in New York, a position he stepped back from in 2015. Weaver — who was also a co-founder of The Flea — gushed over her husband’s dedication to the theater while discussing it with Interview in 2015.

“I feel very proud of what Jim has done,” she said, explaining that his vision was to “make a state-of-the-art theater” which was “essentially the greenhouse, where all talent germinates in theater in the city.”

During a 2003 IndieWire interview, Simpson opened up about how working in theater differs from film, sharing how he loves that he can be “blunt” with his work.

Nearly two decades later, Weaver reflected on how she and Simpson’s respective careers in the entertainment industry has played a -

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big part in helping their relationship work.

“He is an absolutely amazing director,” she gushed during a Smartless podcast interview in 2022. “I feel very fortunate — since we hardly knew each other when we got married — that I ended up marrying someone who totally got what I did, respected the time it took, really enjoys working with me on the occasional script. ... I can run lines with him, we can talk about stuff.”

Weaver and Simpson welcomed their child, Char, in 1990.

While Weaver told The Guardian in 2010 that she “would have loved to have had more children” she also shared that she has “no regrets now because I feel so fortunate that I have one.”

Weaver continued, “I didn't get married till I was 34. I didn't want to have children right away. You get the hand you're dealt, and it took me a long time when I did want a second child, to just wake up and go: ‘Why aren't I enjoying the child I have?’ ”

During a 2022 interview with The Sunday Times, the actress shared that their child is nonbinary.

“They teach at Columbia, digital storytelling, bots, misinformation, they are someone who is excited about AI and not frightened about it,” she shared of their career. “They were not at all interested in doing what I do. That made my husband and me very happy.”

With two demanding careers, Weaver and Simpson figured out how to make things work when it came to parenting Char.

“We don’t usually work together, so we can take turns,” Weaver told IndieWire in April 2003. “We also like to complain about whom we’re working with when we get home, and you can’t do that when you’re working together because you’re looking at ’em.”

In 2010, Weaver spoke to The Guardian about being a working mom and how she balances it all with the support of her husband and child.

“My family comes first and I’m so grateful to them that they let me go off and make films,” she said. “But, you know, I find it very difficult to leave them. I hate it. I have had therapy and found it helpful in dealing with the guilt I’ve felt about leaving them."

Weaver and Simpson gave a joint commencement speech at Monmouth College in May 2024, where they both received honorary doctorates for their work in arts and philanthropy.

While addressing the crowd, Simpson spoke about his relationship with Weaver, saying, “It has been a great advantage to have a partner who's also doing something they love. This happy partnership has allowed us to achieve much more than we could have done on our own."

Later in the speech, Simpson gave the graduates advice. “Fun is fundamental to creativity, and in a creative partnership. Creativity and fun go side by side, so if you're missing fun, you're probably not gonna be that creative," she said.

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