Linda Hamilton is back — and yes, she’s older. In an exclusive interview with Us Weekly, the Terminator: Dark Fate star reveals the message she has for everyone who notices she “got old,” while also sharing why she left Hollywood 28 years ago.
“It wasn’t so much about the work, because I love to work. I hope to work until I die, but if it’s on stage for $7 a performance, that’s enough for me,” Hamilton, 63, tells Us exclusively in the latest issue. “I love my life in New Orleans. I left all this. Not in a belligerent way particularly but just like, I don’t get Hollywood. I don’t get the obsession with this [motions to her body]. Skin is 16 percent of our body. Why does everybody focus on the color and the tightness of skin?”
The Maryland native, who began acting nearly 40 years ago, then says that since she’s been out of the game for some time, she knows she’s aged — and that’s OK!
“Of course people are going to look at me and say ‘Oh, she got old.’ Yes, I did and I have so much more to say as a strong, experienced life-ridden woman,” the Chuck alum shares. “Ultimately, I woke up one day and said, ‘F–k trying to be what I was, because I am so much more than I was,’ and that’s what’s coming to screen. That was the point where I was like, ‘I am all in.’ I dug to my places of greatest sorrow.”
Stepping into Sarah Connor’s shoes wasn’t as easy as it used to be either.
“It was fierce, it was hard. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done — huge, overwhelming, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, we’re talking hard,” Hamilton notes. “And I made it, so that’s life. The more demanding, the harder, the greater. They do go hand and hand.”
For more from Hamilton, watch the video above and pick up the latest issue of Us Weekly, on newsstands now.
Terminator: Dark Fate is in theaters now.