From ‘The Terminator’ to ‘Stranger Things’: Butt-Kicking Icon Linda Hamilton, 68, Is Back and Cooler Than Ever
She looks totally awesome in the new trailer for the final season of 'Stranger Things'
Linda Hamilton will forever be known for her role as Sarah Connor in The Terminator and its sequels, and now, over 40 years after the original movie first wowed audiences and became a sleeper hit, she’s the latest ’80s star to join the cast of Stranger Things.
As Sarah, Hamilton played a character targeted by the Terminator who turns out to be pivotal to the film’s plot—and the fate of humanity. Over the course of her appearances in The Terminator (1984), Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) and Terminator: Dark Fate (2019), Sarah evolved from an everyday young woman to a buff badass who would go on to influence countless strong female protagonists in her wake.
Hamilton has been keeping busy in recent years, and when she reprised her signature role after almost 30 years at age 62 in Terminator: Dark Fate, at 62, she said, “It’s incredibly liberating to play someone of this age.” Now, she’s finding further liberation at 68 with her new role as Dr. Kay in Stranger Things, which debuts its fifth and final season on November 26. While details of the highly-anticipated Netflix sci-fi series have been largely kept under wraps, fans are already speculating about Hamilton’s role and the toughness and ’80s cred she’ll bring to the hit show.
Read on to take a peek at Linda Hamilton in Stranger Things and learn what else she’s been up to since her days as Sarah Connor.
What to know about Linda Hamilton’s ‘Stranger Things’ role
Hamilton is a perfect fit for the Stranger Things universe, and she revealed that she was already a fan of the show before she was cast, telling Us Weekly, “I’ve watched every season with relish. I just love it,” and joking that going from watching the show to acting in it gave her “imposter syndrome” and saying that she won’t be watching this final season, because, “When you really buy into something, you don’t see yourself in it. So I think in a way, it kind of ruined the show for me. I never watch [a project], once I’m in something. It would just completely take me out of the reality of it to see myself in there.”
When Hamilton was first cast in Stranger Things, she shared her excitement with The Hollywood Reporter, saying, “I literally felt like I was an actress getting my first meaningful part. It’s funny how it recycles. It’s not that I felt forgotten, but I was actually talking about retirement, not because there isn’t enough to do, but just I’m tired of being tough . . . I think that’s going to give me another 15 minutes with a new audience, which is cool.”
With her roles in The Terminator franchise and other genre movies, Hamilton has been on her share of over-the-top sets, but she claimed that Stranger Things has been her most elaborate production yet. As she described, “We took a year to shoot eight episodes, so I’ve never been on a project for a year. Six months is the biggest. Terminator, Dante’s Peak, things like that used to be six-month shoots, and hardly anybody does that anymore. So that was really interesting. Like ready to pounce, to just nail the character in the way that she deserved. They started with all my big scenes, my first week in. I mean, I was there getting ready before that, but my first week of shooting was huge. I looked at what they were on the schedule, and I was like, ‘No way are we doing that. I haven’t even spoken words from the character yet.'”
We can’t wait to see what her exciting new part has to offer, and judging from what she’s said so far, it’s sure to be pretty epic!
What Linda Hamilton has to say about her signature ‘Terminator’ role
Linda Hamilton started acting in 1979, with a role in the film Night-Flowers. She was then cast in the 1980 soap opera Secrets of Midland Heights, which was canceled after just eight episodes. Her first starring role was in the low-budget 1982 film TAG: The Assassination Game. Prior to The Terminator, she had assorted TV roles and appeared in the 1984 horror movie Children of the Corn.
While Hamilton had multiple credits to her name when she was cast in The Terminator, she wasn’t very well-known at the time and a number of other actresses, including Rosanna Arquette, Melissa Sue Anderson, Jessica Harper and Jennifer Jason Leigh, were considered for the role before Hamilton was ultimately cast.
Looking back on The Terminator and its sequels, Hamilton said, “Did I think I was going to become an action-adventure star? Not once! I was going to be a Shakespearean actress, and with Terminator, it all took a left turn.” In Terminator 2, Hamilton became a icon, wearing sunglasses and toting a gun while showing off her muscles, and having her character be so strong and heroic, instead of the typical damsel in distress, was the actress’ idea. As James Cameron, the film’s writer and director (and Hamilton’s second husband from 1997 to 1999—prior to that she was married to Re-Animator star Bruce Abbott from 1982 to 1989), explained, “I wrote it to the hilt based on her directive.”
Hamilton helped make Terminator 2 one of 1991’s biggest hits, and the star was in high demand. However, she felt like the roles she was being offered were too typecast, saying, “Police officers, military officers and lesbians. That was pretty much what I got, and nothing else,” and “Nobody looked at it like, ‘She can do anything.’ “Instead it was, ‘She’s going to eat us alive!’ People really did not know what to do with me.”
What Linda Hamilton did between ‘The Terminator’ and ‘Stranger Things’
In the four decades between The Terminator and Stranger Things, Hamilton worked steadily. From 1987 to 1990, she starred in the Beauty and the Beast TV series in a role that was written specifically for her after playing Sarah Connor. She continued to act throughout the ’90s, and her next big movie was the 1997 disaster film Dante’s Peak. In an interview, she recalled how the director “thought I couldn’t play normal” because of her Terminator role, but she proved him wrong.
After that, Hamilton was in many TV movies, and in the ’00s, she could be seen in the films Smile (2005), The Kid & I (2005), Broken (2006), In Your Dreams (2008) and Refuge (2010). From 2010 to 2012, she played the title character’s estranged mom in Chuck, and she made other multi-episode TV appearances in shows including Defiance (2014 to 2015) and Claws (2021 to 2022). Most recently, she starred as an alien-hunting military general in the sci-fi series Resident Alien, and before Stranger Things premieres later this year, she’ll be on the big screen in the up action movie Osiris.
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