Linda Hamilton: Dark Fate took 10 times more effort than Terminator 2

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Although she has continued taking a steady stream of acting jobs, Linda Hamilton has been spending her downtime in recent years living a calm, quiet life outside of the spotlight. So when she was asked to return to the TERMINATOR franchise for the upcoming sequel TERMINATOR: DARK FATE, she was hesitant because she didn't want her neighbors to start looking at her differently. But Hamilton did agree to reprise the role of THE TERMINATOR / TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY heroine Sarah Connor in the new film, and once she signed on she dove into the challenge of being an action star in her 60s.

Playing Sarah again required Hamilton to learn how to fire a rocket launcher, to train in the desert with Green Berets, and to get doctors to put her on a "regimen of supplements and bioidentical hormones to build muscle." The actress told The New York Times, 

This was 10 times the effort I put into the second one … I had a true village of experts trying to get the most out of this body." 

But she's not looking to receive compliments about overcoming her age once audiences see her in DARK FATE.

I don’t think there’s going to be one person who comes up to me who says, ‘You look so great for your age.’ I threw that into the Mississippi River, because that’s not what this is about. I want people to see me and go, ‘Oh my God, she got so old!’"

Once Hamilton had gone through training and started taking her supplements and hormones, director Tim Miller put her through the wringer on set, as Sarah is involved in action sequences that take place on land and in the air and water. Hamilton and her co-stars even got ear infections from working in the water for three weeks.

James Cameron, the director of the first two TERMINATOR films (and Hamilton's ex-husband), also returned to the franchise with DARK FATE, producing the film alongside David Ellison and working with David S. Goyer, Justin Rhodes, Charles Eglee, and Josh Friedman to craft a story that ignores the events of the TERMINATOR films Cameron wasn't involved with.

Goyer, Rhodes, and Billy Ray wrote the screenplay, which finds that Sarah is 

now a grizzled lone wolf who must team up with a mechanically enhanced female soldier (Mackenzie Davis) to protect another young woman (Natalia Reyes) targeted by Terminators. 

Hamilton says that Sarah is "a broken being" at the beginning of the film, "adrift and full of rage".

In the cast with Hamilton, David, and Reyes are Diego Boneta, Gabriel Luna, Edward Furlong, and of course Arnold Schwarzenegger. Brett Azar and Jude Collie were the CGI stand-ins for Schwarzenegger and Furlong in scenes that take place during the time of TERMINATOR 2.

We'll get to see just how old and badass Sarah Connor is these days when TERMINATOR: DARK FATE reaches theatres on November 1st.