James Cameron Opens Up On How He Got Linda Hamilton to Return to the New Terminator Film
How do you ask your ex-wife to come back and work on a project with you? The answer according to James Cameron is “very sensitively.” The couple was married from 1997 to 1999. A short marriage, but one that ended almost twenty years ago.
Linda Hamilton played Sarah Connor in the first two films of the franchise, 1984’s Terminator and 1991’s Terminator: Judgement Day. The character has been played by multiple actresses including Game of Thrones veterans Emilia Clarke and Lena Heady though both struggled to emulate Linda Hamilton.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, the seasoned director opened up about the conversation with his ex-wife, Linda Hamilton. Cameron joked, “It took me a week just to get up the nerve.”
Current director for Terminator 6, Tim Miller, chimed in about Cameron’s initial call to Linda Hamilton saying, “Jim was f****** terrified.” Cameron played along, “It took me a week just to get up the nerve. No, that’s not true. Linda and I have a great relationship.”If only other people could say that about their ex-spouses.
Cameron revealed during the interview that he sold the idea to Linda Hamilton to show audiences what they were missing. He expanded on the pair’s conversation more:
I called her up, and I said: ‘Look, we could rest on our laurels. It’s ours to lose, in a sense. We created this thing several decades ago. But, here’s what can be really cool. You can come back and show everybody how it’s done … Because in my mind, it hasn’t been done a whole lot since the way she did it back in ’91.
With Hamilton’s return, the actress will be following a formula similar to what was seen with the Expendables franchise. One that shows that age isn’t a stop limit. Cameron suggested as such:
Make a huge f****** statement to have her be the really seasoned warrior that she’s become … There are certainly plenty of 50-, 60-, 70-something guys out there that just keep cranking along doing action movies and killing bad guys left and right. But there isn’t an example of that for women, and I think there should be.
Both Cameron and Hamilton have been absent from the franchise since 91’s Terminator: Judgement Day. Now for Terminator 6, the pair returns with the original Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Cameron’s return also signaled a new trilogy for the franchise, one that looks to give it the proper treatment fans have wanted for years.
Are you excited to see the original trio return? Personally, I would love to see them somehow surprise fans by having Michael Biehn aka Kyle Reese reprise his role as well. It would give the new trilogy one heck of a start.
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