Elizabeth Olsen has revealed how Sigourney Weaver helped settle her nerves on the set of her latest film.

The young actress plays alongside the Alien star in the spooky Red Lights - which also stars Robert De Niro.

"I didn't get to work with De Niro but I got to work with Sigourney Weaver," said Elizabeth, younger sister of celebrity twins Mary Kate and Ashley.

"I was really nervous but on my first day on set, she was like, 'Hey can we run through lines for tomorrow?'

"I was like, 'Yeah, absolutely because I don't know what's going to come out of my mouth if we don't'," she grinned.

"It was awesome just to watch how she works and speaks to the director about her part and how intelligent she is. To be in the presence of such a strong female is always incredible."

The film focuses on two investigators of paranormal hoaxes, the veteran Dr Margaret Matheson (Weaver) and her young assistant, Tom Buckley (Cillian Murphy), who study ghostly phenomena with the aim of proving their fraudulent origin. Then Simon Silver, a legendary blind psychic, played by De Niro, reappears after an absence of 30 years and shakes their sceptical and scientific beliefs to the core.

"It was the biggest set I'd been on as I'd only done [films with] dime budgets and it felt like I'd never been treated better in my life," said the California-born actress, now a New York resident, who plays Murphy's lover Sally Owen.

"Even if my character was very much a supporting part I just thought the story was really cool."

:: Red Lights is released in cinemas on Friday, June 15.