Hollywood? It’s full of big egos and boobs, says Terminator star
LinDA hAMiLTon shifted to the edge of the sofa, to offer me a clearer view of her face. There are delicate crow’s feet around her eyes, which ripple gently as she smiles. ‘ i want to reclaim the pride of ownership of all my experiences — and they’re in my face,’ hamilton, 63, declared. ‘i don’t know why i’m in this world where the only thing that is valued is perpetual youth. Why can’t 60 be the new 60? i don’t want to look 40!’ hamilton understands the pressure to stay youthful. ‘i’ve seen the faces that don’t move,’ she told me. ‘The conversations that go: “Look how beautiful she is. she hasn’t aged a bit!” really? ‘it’s very hard not to buy into that — and that’s one of the reasons i left hollywood,’ the actress told me, explaining why she sold her Malibu villa in 2012. Los Angeles had become a place of ‘inflated egos, and inflated boobs and lips. i felt like a real outsider, so i left.’ The west coast estate had been her home for 16 years, and it’s where she raised her children — Dalton Abbott, 30, and Josephine Cameron 26 — one each from marriages to ex-husbands Bruce Abbott and oscar-winning filmmaker James Cameron. ‘you wake up one day and go: “Um, children are out of the house, the agents aren’t really calling offering work. i see the writing on the wall. is this lifestyle sustainable?”’ so she moved to a farm in Virginia, not far from where she grew up in Maryland, with goats, chickens and a beautiful garden. Then a couple of years later, she upped sticks again and wound up in the Big easy: new orleans. she loves the architecture and the history. ‘But more importantly, strangers call you Baby,’ she laughed. ‘Get into a traffic tangle and the other driver will go: “you got no problem to worry about, Baby!” ’ she was content. she did some television and independent movies. And then Cameron called her — three times before she called him back. ‘it’s just my nature,’ she said. ‘All my friends call it hamil-time. even if i love you, i might not call you back.’ But back she is. As in, ‘ i’ll be back.’ next Wednesday, hamilton is on the big screen once again as iconic action hero sarah Connor, the role she created in 1984’ s The Terminator and again, seven years later, in Terminator: Judgment Day, fondly known as T-2. Both pictures were enormous hits, catapulting the classically trained actress to superstardom.
Terminator: Dark Fate allows her to have ‘another 15 minutes of fame’ before heading back to the Big easy, and the home she shares with her ‘precious’ chihuahua noodles. (‘i wake up and kiss my dog and i’m happy, and she doesn’t answer back.’)
you might think twice about calling sarah Connor ‘ Baby’, even in new orleans. she’s still as hard as nails: tough enough to kick ass all the way from Budapest (where the film was shot by director Tim Miller) to hollywood.
sarah saved the planet, back in the day, and it was good to sit in a darkened room and watch her again, locked and loaded with all manner of firepower to do battle with rev-9 (Gabriel Luna), an even more lethal robotic shape- shifting machine from the future sent back to assassinate a young woman called Dani ramos, played by natalia reyes.
Dani’s not alone. Grace (Mackenzie Davis), a super-enhanced soldier, has been hurled back from the future to save her. Together, the three women are the best fighting unit to hit cinemas this year.
‘Wonder Woman was great, and i’m sure [the forthcoming] Charlie’s Angels will be, too,’ hamilton said. ‘But what we have here is three very different women. We’re not like a cardboard cutout of a woman divided into three. We have the same idea of what we want, but with completely different approaches.’
And, yes, Arnold schwarzenegger’s Fighting F fit: Natalia, Mackenzie and Linda in the new Terminator movie back, too — though Linda’s character is less than thrilled about hanging out with him. ‘is that your Terminator child?’ she snaps when she spots a family portrait. ‘By the way, playing sarah Connor is
h hard,’ she said. Production postponements meant she had a year to get ready for the role. Doctors put her on hormones — including testosterone — to increase body mass. ‘ My blood pressure was spiking. i was getting angry and i couldn’t explain e why. Like, explosive! Apparently it turned out i’m just sensitive and my body didn’t like it.’
so she tapered off the drugs and hired sports performance specialist Mackie shilstone, who usually works with superstars such as serena Williams.
‘i only got him because she [serena] was pregnant,’ hamilton said. ‘ Mackie put me on supplements and was constantly researching the older body, because he works with pro athletes — and there are no 60-year-old pro athletes.’ ThAT
extra vitality and stamina came in useful, not just for the action scenes, but when she had to go to war over naff dialogue. ‘The joy of being a woman of a certain age, who has nothing left to prove, is that i felt confident enough to say: “That’s trite, that’s petty and that’s stupid!”
‘And to point out that there’s no need to create a false conflict between these three women. it was the first time i’d gotten to say: “Let’s cut the s*** and make this right.”’
she did not want to let her co- stars down; nor did she want to fail the character she created 35 years ago. ‘i worked really hard to make sure this wasn’t just a c**p shoot,’ she told me, as we sat in a suite at the plush Mandarin oriental hotel in Knightsbridge.
After London, the Terminator team are heading to Korea and China, where the films are revered.
noodles, though, will stay home — which may be just as well. ‘They might eat her in Korea!’ hamilton joked.