Linda Hamilton, wonderful actress, is well known for her role as Sarah Connor in the Terminator films. I did not need to travel in time to sit with her at a convention and interview her!
When she is actually not fighting those darn pesky Terminators, Linda has been seen in other films such as King Kong Lives, Mr. Destiny, Dante’s Peak , Children of the Corn, and that TV series many women loved, Beauty and the Beast with Ron Perlman (Sons of Anarchy).
Linda is a native of my home state of Maryland, and I was just so extremely lucky a couple years ago to sit with her one on one while she stopped the long line of autograph collectors at a convention to interview with little old me.
Here is some of that conversation.
Mark - How did you first begin your acting career?
Linda - I did children’s theater, and I remember my twin sister and I were both cast as the princess in Rumplestilskin, and that was fun. But the second year we did Wind in the Willows, and I got to play Badger, who was a mean scary character, who came out of a pile of leaves to scare the children, and that was when I fell in love. That gave me the bug.
Mark - Is there a favorite role you may have?
Linda - One of the best pieces of work I’ve done, and something that was dear to me, was called A Mothers Prayer—an obscure piece for the USA Network a long time ago. It was a beautiful story about a Mom, whom I portrayed, who had AIDS, and she became her own adoption agency, finding a home for her son before she passes away.
Mark - Anything you can tell me about the Terminator films that’s not too well known to fans?
Linda - I almost didn’t get to play the role of Sarah Connor because three weeks before we began shooting, I broke my ankle, so I was barely walking. The first few weeks of the film I was really limping, and they had to do a medical wrap on my ankle every day of that shoot. In fact, there is the scene in the film where I’m running down a hilly street with Michael Biehn, holding him up with the big truck rolling down the road toward us, and James Cameron said to us, “If you fall down, roll to the right, because that truck can’t stop in time.” And I really remember at one point during that shot this pain that went shooting through my leg—I would have gone down had I not been warned!
Mark - Tell me a little bit about your TV series Beauty and the Beast, and working with Ron Perlman.
Linda - Ron is the love of my life. He and I are still close, and really good friends. We had a ball doing that show. Even when the show was tedious for us, I always wound up on his shoulder at the end of those episodes. We had so much fun with it, and with each other. We just kept it very alive and loving the whole time. Ron was and is great.
Mark - Any acting gigs you can mention to us?
Linda - I did an English film called In Your Dreams, which is adorable. And, one called Waters Rising, which is another English comedy. I also have a TV series that I’m shooting in Canada that’s called The Line, but it’s called The Weight there. It’s wonderfully written and I play the most extremely whacked-out con artist. And then was Weeds.
Mark - What do you like to do when you are not acting?
Linda - I’m with my children, and that’s great. I also read, garden, and I do a lot of charity work and love to be outdoors.
Mark- Do you collect anything?
Linda - I really make it a point to collect nothing. I mean that—I was a collector for a short while, and fortunately that was in my youth, before I could really afford to keep going. But somehow I got cured of that.
Mark - So, before you were cured, what did you collect?
Linda - I used to collect Santa Clauses, you know, those wonderfully hand carved special things.
Mark - If you could have any autograph in the world, who's would you want?
Linda - I would say Bruce Springsteen. He just meant so much to me. He kept me alive for a couple of summers there with some of his songs, that’s what celebrities do for us. I met him actually, and I didn’t ask him for his autograph. The first time I saw him I was on a plane, and I could not get up the courage to ask him anything. When it’s a hero, it’s a hero!
After our inteview, Linda kindly autographed a few things for me! How cool is that?! Then she actually thanked me for a great interview, she shook my hand, and then kissed me on the cheek! OMG. Too cool. She then sat back down at her booth, and began signing for the many lined up fans, and talked to them and took photos with them as if she knew them all, and it was like watching her at a party.
I hope to meet up with her again, if she even still attends conventions, and ask her so many more questions. She was one of the sweetest most down to earth women in show bizz that I have ever met!
Plus, not ONE Terminator came through time and interrupted our interview! Gotta love that.
By Mark J. Gross
By Mark J. Gross
No comments:
Post a Comment