ROBOT REBOOT
Linda Hamilton gets back in fighting shape for Terminator: Dark Fate
When Linda Hamilton looked at her phone and saw she had missed a call from her ex-husband James Cameron, she figured it was a mistake.
Cameron, who had directed Hamilton in the first two Terminator films, called her three times before finally leaving her a message.
“‘Hey, get back to me,’” Hamilton recounts him saying. “‘It’s about work.’”
Hamilton, 63, had made a name for herself playing Sarah Connor — a diner waitress turned saviour of the human race in 1984’s Terminator and its 1991 sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
But she didn’t return for ensuing movies in the series that featured her co-star Arnold Schwarzenegger as a T-800 Terminator.
“I’ve spent quite a bit of my career sort of fighting against the image people had of me. Directors had a notion of me from Sarah Connor, but I wanted to play all types of women in my career,” she said in a recent phone interview. Still, the call from Cameron, to whom she was married for a brief spell in the ’90s, asking her to join Schwarzenegger in Terminator: Dark Fate, piqued her interest.
Q Sarah Connor is an iconic film character and both the first Terminator and T2 hold up incredibly well. Did the legacy of the first two Terminator movies weigh on you before you decided to come back for Dark Fate?
A Yes, but not necessarily in a positive way. I was afraid to mess it up. I was afraid to come back and have it not have the impact (I was hoping for). If I did it, I felt like I owed it to the character of Sarah to be great.
Q You didn’t call Cameron back until after the third call. How did you react when you finally spoke?
A I was shocked (that he wanted her to come back), but then it was about whether I wanted to go into that deep, dark hole again, because that’s what it’s like to play Sarah. I also had to weigh whether I wanted to give up my privacy. I’ve built a lovely, normal life in New Orleans. So it still took me six weeks to make up my mind to decide if I wanted to be in.
Q What kind of Sarah are we meeting in Dark Fate?
A Her mission has changed. Well, let’s say her mission hasn’t changed, but there are certain conditions of her life that have changed, which I’m not at liberty to discuss. She’s very much a woman adrift with no country. She’s still fighting the machines, but she’s also not a real fan of humanity either. She’s bitter, she’s broken and she’s an island. But she’s also a woman looking for a cause.
Q With you, Cameron and Schwarzenegger once again reteaming, there’s a lot of anticipation for this new Terminator story. What kind of film will this be for the fans?
A It’s a trimmed-down story, with characters that you can care about. I think that was the missing element of the three in the middle. They had all these effects and the largesse and the money ... but it didn’t pare down to a human story with characters that you could care about. There were too many characters, too many effects and it just sort of blasted out there without the humanity. That is our main goal this time. I don’t mean to say there aren’t special effects. There are HUGE action sequences. But really, as impressive as they can be, those can’t speak to characters and old-fashioned storytelling, and that’s what we’re trying to make a return to.
Q Was it fun for you to get back into that ass-kicking shape?
A It was fun to go back there. I certainly put in the same amount of work and maybe even more that I did for Judgment Day. I had a trainer, Mackie Shilstone, with me in New Orleans who has an amazing approach ... He doesn’t work with professional athletes that are 62 years old. But he’s a scientist and he has a great mind. So he was able to figure out how to bring out the best in me ... He made it so I had a body that shows I’ve been a fighter my whole life. It’s not a body that moves like a 62-year-old woman.
Q What was it like reconnecting with Schwarzenegger?
A I was amazed at how much true affection I felt for him ... Maybe that was shared history. But I was happy to have moments where I could think, ‘Oh my God. He’s still so strong and good at this stuff.’ We were in zero gravity doing (stuff ) and he was just so spot on. I’m landing on his chest, and he just had some heart trouble, but he’s just an amazing specimen. We had a good thing going.
Q What was the most fun part for you getting back into Sarah’s shoes this time around?
A There was so much more asked of me in this one than any of the others. Three times more was asked of me on this film than anything I did on Judgment Day. In this one, we’re fighting in the air, on land and in the water. We spent weeks in the water, freezing. Then we got ear infections. Then they hung us upside down for weeks. The minute we got into the 90-degree heat, I’d want to throw up because my ears were hurting. It was day after day of hardship. I was thinking, ‘I’d better not eat, or if I eat it’d better be something good in case I vomit and it gets on Mackenzie (Davis),’ who was behind me also hung upside down. Even if I had been 33, it would have been just as demanding. But I loved it.
Q I remember seeing the first Terminator as a kid on VHS and the future it painted scared the crap out of me. Here we are in 2019, 35 years after the original. What do you think about AI and technology nowadays?
A The first Terminator set something into motion for me. I do not get along with machines. They just don’t work for me. I have a real hard time asking a machine to do anything for me. The idea of asking Siri or Google to turn the lights on doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t understand a society that’s so lazy it allows machines to do everything for us. Then there’s what’s happening today with AI. It’s actually more real than ever. So we’d better figure that out before it’s too late.