Production of Alien involved extreme physical and technical challenges, including bulky suits, intense summer heat, passing-out actors, malfunctioning props, claustrophobic sets, and obsessive lighting adjustments. Ridley Scott increased on-set tension to heighten performances, and the crew briefly struck over long hours. Veronica Cartwright, an English-born actress with credits in The Birds and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, worked alongside Sigourney Weaver and other notable actors through nearly five months of difficult shooting. Cartwright auditioned for Ripley but was cast as Joan Lambert, then emphasized Lambert's common sense to make the character more than a panicked wreck.
Shooting Alien was kind of like skipping boot camp and going straight to combat: No one was prepared for the grueling conditions under which Ridley Scott's ambitious project would be filmed. Early in the production, the bulky space suits and intense summer heat had actors passing out mid-take. Later, Scott started ratcheting up tension among the cast to intensify certain scenes, like when one character had to slap another. Props malfunctioned, the set grew claustrophobic, and the cast was sometimes left waiting around idly
The English-born actress had made The Birds and Invasion of the Body Snatchers by the time she showed up outside of London to shoot what would become one of the 20th century's defining horror movies. Alongside Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Yaphet Kotto, and Ian Holm, she weathered a sweaty, technically arduous production that lasted nearly five months. If Cartwright was in the trenches, at least she was there with co-workers she enjoyed. Her character, the increasingly panicked Nostromo
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