Linda Hamilton On Keeping The Character of Sarah Connor ‘Real’ In Terminator: Dark Fate

Terminator legend Linda Hamilton recently sat down with The Sunday Post to talk about her career, normal life, Sarah Connor and Terminator: Dark Fate.

Seven years ago Linda decided she’d had enough of Hollywood and bought herself a farm in Virginia to escape the bright lights and hoopla…

“I got myself a farm in Virginia – a very bleak, real farm,” she explained. “There was no air conditioning and it was never warm enough in the winter.
I lived very authentically, until my parents died, and then I wanted to try New Orleans. I knew I’d never go back to LA. I never go backwards, only somewhere new.”

Linda Hamilton

On why she left Hollywood…

“So when it came to this decision about the film, I didn’t know if I wanted to invite all of that back into my world. I loved my neighbours and my neighbourhood.

I was living happily ever after in a way that just felt so real. And there is a part of me that feels what took me out of LA was a rejection of Hollywood and all the grandiosity and the inflated egos, inflated boobs and inflated lips. The inflated self-worth.

If you could have seen my bleak farm, you’d think, ‘Wow, she really went the other way!’ In New Orleans I’d found a really nice balance and I wasn’t sure I was willing to trade that for another 15 minutes of fame.”

Linda Hamilton

It appears that what lured Linda back to the Hollywood rat-race was simply the love of the craft…

“In the end, I love to work. I might not like all the trimmings that come with it, and the whole celebrity thing, but I love the work. It’s not that there hasn’t been other work, because there’s been just enough to keep me going, but this film has been the hardest and greatest thing I have ever done.

It paid me back so much.”

Linda Hamilton

On the physical changes facing her in reprising the role of Sarah Connor decades later, Linda said:

“I had to unlearn the muscle memory from 1991 and rebuild my skills set from there.
I did military training, stunt training, scuba lessons, Spanish lessons – so my brain is very solvent now.

It was extremely hard. At one point I was in the desert in Texas sobbing because it was so hard to be fluid with those weapons.

They loaded me up with 35lbs of weapons and I said, ‘Forget firing the weapons, I can’t even get out of the car!

There were days when I felt like it was almost physically impossible to keep going but we did it.”

Linda Hamilton

What did Linda bring to the role of mother-of-the-future, Sarah Connor, in Terminator: Dark Fate?

“Like me, Sarah is now a woman of a certain age and I wanted to keep it real and show that.
She’s still strong, of course, but it maybe takes her a little longer these days to get back up when things get rough. It’s liberating to approach playing a character like that.”

Linda Hamilton

On dealing with the hopes and fears of the fanbase…

“I normally never get too entrenched in the end results of how a film does. I do the best work I can and move on, but in this case I feel totally invested and the nearer we get to the release the more I feel that anticipation.
I don’t want to let our fans down or the franchise down and I don’t want to let the character down. If this one works, there should be another one that’s even better. That’s always the hope, right?”

Linda Hamilton

Are you ready for Linda Hamilton’s return as the iconic Sarah Connor?

Terminator: Dark Fate hits theatres soon.

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