Hamilton plays the villain on Lost Girl
Terminator star guests on Canadian drama
Look out, Lost Girl — Linda Hamilton’s looking for you.
The former Terminator and Beauty and the Beast star was in Canada last year to guest on the Canadian sci-fi series.
In Sunday’s episode, “Delinquents” (9 p.m. on Showcase), Hamilton plays Acacia, a ruthless assassin out to get the powerful title character, succubus Bo (Anna Silk), her human sidekick Kenzi (Ksenia Solo) and police partner Dyson (Kris Holden-Ried). These good guys are trying to save at-risk youths from a dangerous Fae serial killer. Hamilton’s character is out to thwart the good guys.
She came to Toronto to shoot the episode at the request of director Gail Harvey, a pal she’s teamed with before. “Pretty much anything Gail wants, Gail gets,” says Hamilton. “No, really, I love her to death.”
“She is fun, funny, no bull—, loyal, kind — just a fantastic person and also a great actress,” says Harvey, who this season has also directed episodes of Murdoch Mysteries and Republic of Doyle. “Plus committed and hard working.”
According to the script, Hamilton’s character mentored Tansim (played by Rachel Skasten), a Dark Fae reluctantly partnered with Holden-Reid’s super natural detective, Dyson. “She has a job to deliver Bo to our leader,” says Hamilton of Tasnim. “I’m here to make sure she does the job.”
Hamilton, 56, picks and chooses parts carefully these days, preferring to spend as much time as possible at her farm in Virginia. When she works, she looks for characters who are “a little outside the box. I don’t think I’d be happy standing in a suit delivering forensic facts.”
She hadn’t seen Lost Girl before she took the gig. The series can be seen Stateside on Syfy, a U.S. cable channel, but it doesn’t sound like Hamilton has much of a cable package. “I almost watch no television,” she says. “I gave it up 30 years ago and returned to watch Lost.” She’s never seen an episode of The Sopranos, Six Feet Under or Mad Men. “I like books,” she says. “I disappear into as many books as I can.”
She’s worked in Canada before, often at the request of Harvey. The two worked in Toronto on the payTV drama The Line and in Vancouver on Home by Christmas, a 2006 TV-movie. She’s also worked in Halifax and Montreal.
I love Canada,” she says, “because the scariest guy in Canada will turn around and say, ‘My, what an adorable dog!’”
Hamilton was once briefly married to a Canadian, Avatar and Titanic director James Cameron. The couple split in 1999.
This reporter once made the mistake of writing that Hamilton was married three times. A strong rebuke soon followed. “Twice was enough — I’m not an idiot,” she says.
A year ago, with her son having graduated university and her daughter in college, Hamilton was ready to change things up. “I just didn’t want to sit around beautiful Malibu waiting for the phone to ring,” she says.
She settled in Virginia because it is near Washington, giving her the option of doing some advocacy work. “I wanted to be more politically based,” she says.
Plus she grew up in Maryland, and longed for the days when she would ride horses “down farm lanes and along big roads to the river.” Getting her own “lovely horse farm” was the fulfilment of a dream.
Work still gets in the way. She shot the international miniseries Airforce One is Down in Luxemburg last summer, forcing her to miss her son’s graduation. An earlier shoot in Luxemburg caused her to miss his fifth birthday. “He hates Luxemburg,” she says. While working on Lost Girl, she found herself just a few blocks away from the Etobicoke studio where the new version of Beauty and the Beast (starring Kristen Kreuk) is shot. “Nothing like following in someone else’s footsteps,” she jokes. She remains good friends with Ron Perlman ( Sons of Anarchy) who played the furry-faced sewer dweller opposite Hamilton in the romantic, late ‘80s version of the series. “I’m happy for him,” she says of his TV success today.