Alien Characters: Every Name, Actor and Film

The Alien characters fall into four groups: Ripley and the crews around her, the androids who appear in most of the films, the corporate figures behind each mission, and the creatures themselves. Everything below runs in release order and reveals how several characters end, so skip ahead if you have not seen a film yet.

AVP: Alien vs. Predator and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem also feature the creatures, but their human characters belong to the Predator franchise and are covered there.

Alien 1979, directed by Ridley Scott, puts seven crew members and a cat named Jones aboard the commercial towing ship Nostromo.

• Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) stays on the ship while others investigate, works out that the transmission was a warning, and ends the film as the only survivor.
• Dallas (Tom Skerritt) goes down to the moon and is killed while hunting the creature in the air ducts.
• Kane (John Hurt) looks into an egg, is attacked by a facehugger, and later has a young alien burst from his chest during a meal.
• Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) joins the landing party and is killed after the crew disables Ash.
• Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) is the creature's first victim.
• Parker (Yaphet Kotto) helps Lambert disable Ash and is killed soon after.
• Ash (Ian Holm) is the science officer who lets the group back aboard, and is later revealed as an android carrying out the company's secret orders.
• Mother (voiced by Helen Horton) is the ship's computer, which picks up the signal and wakes the crew.

Aliens 1986, directed by James Cameron, brings Ripley back after 57 years adrift and surrounds her with a Marine unit and a colony's last survivor.

• Newt (Carrie Henn) is the young girl who survived alone at the LV-426 colony.
• Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn) is one of the four who escape, and Hicks has his own entry.
• Bishop (Lance Henriksen) is the Marines' android, badly damaged yet still able to help save Newt.
• Burke (Paul Reiser) is the company man who wanted to bring back alien embryos for profit.
• Hudson, Vasquez, Apone and Gorman (Bill Paxton, Jenette Goldstein, Al Matthews and William Hope) fill out the Marines, and the inexperienced Lieutenant Gorman panics in the first ambush, which hands command to Ripley.
• The alien queen is the film's final opponent, and Ripley fights her in a power loader before pushing her out of an airlock.

Alien 3, directed by David Fincher, strands Ripley on the foundry prison world Fiorina 161, where Newt and Hicks did not survive the crash. Clemens (Charles Dance) is the prison doctor who treats her, Andrews (Brian Glover) is the warden, and Dillon (Charles S. Dutton) sacrifices himself to help trap the creature. Morse (Danny Webb) is the only prisoner left alive. Lance Henriksen returns as Bishop II, a man who looks exactly like Bishop and claims to be his maker.

Alien Resurrection, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, follows Ripley 8, a clone with alien DNA that gives her extra strength, acidic blood and a link to the creatures. Around her are the mercenaries Call (Winona Ryder), Johner (Ron Perlman), Vriess (Dominique Pinon) and Christie (Gary Dourdan), and the scientists Dr. Wren (J.E. Freeman) and Gediman (Brad Dourif). Call turns out to be an android, and the pale hybrid born from the queen treats Ripley as its mother.

Prometheus (2012), directed by Ridley Scott, centers on Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and the android David (Michael Fassbender). Around them are Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), Captain Janek (Idris Elba) and Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce). The Engineers are the ancient beings whose structure the crew explores on LV-223.

Alien Covenant (2017), also directed by Ridley Scott, follows Daniels (Katherine Waterston), Oram (Billy Crudup) and Tennessee (Danny McBride). Fassbender is credited as David / Walter, because Walter is the ship's identical but more obedient android. The film reveals that David survived the Prometheus mission and released a pathogen that wiped out the local population, and the neomorphs are the creatures that grow from spores on the planet.

Alien Romulus, directed by Fede Álvarez, follows Rain (Cailee Spaeny), a young miner whose contract has been extended against her will. Her android brother Andy (David Jonsson) joins Tyler (Archie Renaux), Kay (Isabela Merced), Bjorn (Spike Fearn) and Navarro (Aileen Wu) on a raid of the derelict Renaissance station. Rook is a damaged science android, credited to Daniel Betts for the facial and vocal performance and to Ian Holm as the facial and vocal reference. The station's scientists made a fluid called Z-01 from the facehuggers, and Kay's use of it produces the film's human and xenomorph hybrid.

The xenomorph is the species behind every threat in the saga, and its stages are laid out on the xenomorph life cycle page. Alien (1979) credits the creature simply as Alien, played by Bolaji Badejo, while Alien: Romulus credits Trevor Newlin as Xenomorph. The queen lays the eggs, the neomorphs appear in Covenant, and the hybrids appear in Alien Resurrection, Alien: Romulus and, across the Predator crossover films, as the Predalien.

It could be argued that the androids are the real continuity of the saga, since the human crews change in every film. Ash hides the company's orders, Call hides her purpose aboard the Auriga, David slips a drop of black liquid into Holloway's drink, and Andy's loyalty shifts when a chip from Rook is installed. In each case the android knows something the humans do not. Bishop and Andy are the counterexamples that matter: Bishop helps save Newt despite his damage, and Andy returns to Rain's side once she restores his original programming. The full set is covered on the alien androids page.

No director or release date has been reported for the new Alien film now in early development, according to TheWrap on 23 October 2026, so the cast of any sequel is unknown. The status is tracked on the alien romulus 2 page. To meet these characters in the right sequence, start with the alien movies in order list, and see the alien cast page for the full billing.