Born
September 26, 1956 in Salisbury, Maryland, USA, Linda
Carroll Hamilton is six
minutes older than her identical
twin sister Leslie Hamilton Gearren. They have an
older sister, Laura - a successful lawyer in Washington,
DC - and a younger brother
named John. Her birth
father, who was a general practitioner, died in a car
crash
when Linda & Leslie were only five years
old. Leslie - residing in New Jersey - is
an ER
nurse who has done a stint as her sisters double in
Terminator 2: Judgment
Day (1991). Linda's
mother remarried; her stepfather was Chief of Police
of
Salisbury; he's retired now.
Linda's real
dad suffered from bipolar disorder, and though Linda
was diagnosed
early, too, she refused any drug therapy.
All her life she has suffered from
manic-depressive
illness, a condition that propelled her to brilliance
in the manic
state and to depths of despair in the
melancholic one. By the end of her 30's she
gave
in and is now on anti-depressants to control her illness.
But still during her childhood Linda suffered from the
fact that everybody saw her as
just one with her
sister. At the age of 16, this frustration lead to a
severe identity
crisis: she cut her hair and eyelashes
and finally weighed about 167 pounds just to
differ
from her sister. "I wanted to be ugly. I became
the intellectual, the thinker,
as opposed to my
sister the cheerleader. I was voted class snob."
Although
Linda began acting at an early age, she never considered
acting as a
career: she had plans to become an archeologist
or possibly a firefighter. For a
couple of years
Linda also studied classical piano and - while still
being in high
school - had a summer job working
in a local zoo as a security guard.
Her love
of acting continued to grow while working with a children's
theatre group in
Salisbury. Her steady belief is
that "acting decided to have its way with me. I
loved it;
I always loved it. I did children's theater
when I was young. No particular talent for it,
I
might add. You know, I have a twin sister, so they hired
my twin sister and me to do
this play. I'm sure
they thought it was really cute to have the Hamilton
twins playing
the same role. I discovered my passion
for acting then."
In high school she was
the assistant to the drama coach and even directed a
play.
After graduating in 1974, Linda enrolled in
two acting classes at Washington College
in Chestertown,
Maryland. There Linda performed in a couple of student
productions
like Prometheus
Bound by John
Million and Elmer Rice's The
Adding Machine.
Soon after, she became involved with the Kent Players,
a community theatre group
based in Chestertown.
She played in a theatrical version of Henry Fielding's
novel
Tom Jones, in Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, Arthur Miller's A View From The
Bridge a musical adaptation of Oscar
Wilde's The Importance
of Being Ernest
called Ernest In
Love, and Looice.
In 1989, Linda returned to Washington
College to receive an Alumni Citation as
"outstanding
student" at the College's 207th commencement exercises.
After two
years at Washington College "... I decided I loved
it [acting], and I decided
to go to New York to
study at an acting school". So Linda and her then
boyfriend
moved to New York in 1976, where she joined
the famous Lee Strasberg Theatre
Institute; there
she studied Method Acting and - among others - was taught
by
Nicholas Ray.
After appearing in numerous
student stage productions such as Shakespeare's
Richard III, she made her professional debut with a
small role on the daytime
television drama Search
for Tomorrow.
Because her then agency thought her
unsuited to the theatre, they encouraged Linda
to
try her luck in Los Angeles.
In 1979 she borrowed
$ 2,000 and moved to California. When she earned
her first
role, a guest spot on Shirley, she was
down to her last $ 6.
Her first
features for television were Rape and Marriage: The Rideout Case and
Country Gold.
When Linda tried to make the down payment
on her Venice home in 1982, she
discovered that
her then business manager had embezzled $107,000 of
her earnings.
The manager had also been stealing
from his other clients, was subsequently
sentenced
to five years in prison. "It was a nightmare, I
had to borrow the down
payment." Because of
frustration she began sniffing cocaine. At her peak,
she and a
friend would buy an ounce and snort it
until it was gone. "There are drugs that
expand
the soul, but cocaine is one that just closes the heart.
It's a very alone,
horrible sort of shrinking drug.
I quit on my own, but there was a time when I feared
I would have to go in for treatment. I really was in
trouble." She needed three years
to get clean
again.
On the other hand Linda met Bruce Abbott in 1982 on the set of her first motion picture
T.A.G. - The Assassination
Game. He played
a psychopath trying to kill her.
In real life they
married December 19, 1982.
Linda's first
big break was in 1984, when she played the part of Sarah
Connor in
James Cameron's The Terminator. From 1987 to 1989 she came to fame as
Catherine Chandler in TV's Beauty and the Beast. The show earned her
nominations
for an Emmy, Golden Globe, and People's Choice Award;
she received
a Saturn and a Romy Award.
Linda
and her Beauty co-star Ron Perlman are still
very close friends.
After having miscarried already,
Linda got pregnant again in 1989 and quit Beauty
due to her wish to be just there for her
family. October 4, 1989 Linda's and Bruce's
baby
boy Dalton Bruce Abbott was born. Shortly after their
son's birth Linda and her
husband separated and
got divorced by the end of 1989.
In March
1990 Linda was offered to reprise her role as Sarah
Connor in Terminator
2- Judgment
Day. 13 weeks before production started, she began
military as well
as fitness training for her advanced
interpretation of the Sarah character.
When production
finally started, Linda, who had gained 40 pounds during
her
pregnancy, was a lean machine. Though she weighed
as much as she had in 1984
for The Terminator, she was now all muscle, measuring about 14 percent body fat.
The new interpretation of Sarah Connor earned her MTV
Movie Awards for "best
female performance"
as well as "most desirable female"; she also
received another
Saturn Award.
After T2 Linda moved together with her T director James Cameron.
Because of her
continued heavy workout Linda suffered two more miscarriages,
but February 15, 1993 Linda's and James's daughter Josephine
Archer Cameron
was born.
Early in 1994 Linda
moved out with the kids to her own place during preproduction
of Cameron's True
Lies. They were
together again at the movie's premiere.
For her made
for TV movie A
Mother's Prayer
(1995) Linda received a Cable Ace
Award and a Golden
Globe nomination. 1997's Dante's Peak earned her a
Blockbuster
Award.
July 26,
1997 Linda and James Cameron married on a free weekend
of Cameron's
Titanic shooting.
Just some weeks
after the 1998 Academy Awards the couple separated,
and
December 1998 Linda filed for divorce because
of "irreconcilable differences".
Currently
Linda and the kids are living in Malibu.
Linda is
a big football fan (SF 49ers), smokes cigarettes and
loves icecream.
In her freetime she reads a lot,
likes playing Scrabble, collects Santa Claus
and
Easter Bunny figurines, is mad about horses and most
of all spends time
with her kids. |
