This archive report was first published on 3 September 2019.
On the surface, Linda Hamilton's role as Sarah Connor in the Terminator franchise may seem like a straightforward action film, but the actress's journey to this iconic character was anything but straightforward.
Published on September 3, 2019, Hamilton's story began with the original Terminator film, where she played a woman targeted by a cyborg because she would later bear the savior of all mankind. The cast and crew worked long nights, and Hamilton spent much of her role cowering or on the run, a experience that left her with a lasting impact.
Years later, when James Cameron contacted her to star in the sequel, Hamilton had one request: she wanted Sarah to go crazy. Cameron obliged, and the result was a version of Sarah Connor locked away in a psychiatric institution, with war in her eyes and a body trained like a weapon.
Hamilton was six months pregnant when Cameron first approached her with the idea, and she was still married to actor Bruce Abbott. However, by the time Cameron returned with a finished script, Hamilton was mothering her newborn son, Dalton, and Abbott had asked for a divorce. Despite the challenges, Hamilton saw the film as an opportunity to pour her emotions into the character.
“Having been left, I just needed to get up on my feet and be strong and do nothing but mother my child and get ready for this film,” Hamilton said. “You wake up all alone with your body and go, ‘Hmm, these aren’t hips anymore — they’re flanks.’ To give myself permission to be that powerful, strong woman was necessary for my survival.”
The result was one of the most indelible action heroines of all time, a muscular mother who fought like hell. Mackenzie Davis, who co-stars with Hamilton in Terminator: Dark Fate, praised Hamilton's portrayal, saying, “That character still isn’t normalized. She wasn’t evincing this hyper-fashionable or hyper-feminine aesthetic of a time, so it’s allowed the Sarah Connor character to be this transcendent visual icon.”
