Biography

Her identical twin sister Leslie Hamilton Gearren was Linda's double in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). Leslie is seen when Sarah is remembering playing with John at the park and when the T-1000 is impersonating her.

Sprained her ankle prior to filming The Terminator (1984) and it never quite healed right on account of all the running she had to do in the film. While filming Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), she suffered permanent hearing damage in one ear while she fired a gun inside an elevator without using her earplugs.

Has appeared on television and revealed that she suffered from bipolar disorder. She said that her condition had destroyed her marriage to her first husband Bruce Abbott, abusing him verbally and physically, and that it also had ruined her marriage to second husband James Cameron. Linda said that it was her love for her two children that finally forced her to seek treatment, and she began taking medication. That was 10 years ago, and Linda says that she will always be grateful that she chose treatment and regrets the pain that her illness caused those she loves.

She divorced second husband James Cameron after discovering he was having an affair with actress Suzy Amis during the making of the movie Titanic (1997). Her divorce from him was the second-most expensive divorce next to that of Steven Spielberg and Amy Irving. Hamilton stood to take half of Cameron's earnings - close to $50 million.

No longer receives residuals for Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), due to Carolco, the film's studio, filing for bankruptcy. In a 2020 interview with WGN Radio, she claimed her friends pay her $1 every time they tell her they've seen the film on TV.

My heart is so light that it's amazing. I get to play all this grief, all this loss, all this disaster and chaos. It's hysterically funny. I am very light. I keep saying I'm Lucy Ricardo trapped in somebody else's body.

[At the 1997 Academy Awards, on then-husband James Cameron] My husband is the sexiest man in the world.

[on the development of the character Sarah Connor from the Terminator films] A woman who grows and transforms on screen is always a wonderful thing to play. Sarah went from a vulnerable, normal girl to someone who finds all of her deep reservoirs of strength and comes through it all.

[on her reaction to Arnold Schwarzenegger being cast as the Terminator in the original film] I didn't take Schwarzenegger very seriously as an actor at that time. I said, "Oh Lord, why cast a man who looks like a machine as a machine? Cast somebody who's very thin to do these superhuman acts." And I was wrong. He was used tremendously effectively, and he was served very well by that film.

[on James Cameron after their divorce] I love him as much as I ever did. But that doesn't mean that the heartache wasn't huge and I haven't suffered. I knew how Jim was when I married him and I love him still.