Terminator: What Linda Hamilton Did Between Judgment Day & Dark Fate

In Terminator: Dark Fate, Linda Hamilton returned to her signature role after 28 years, but here’s what she did between that and Terminator 2. Hamilton had only been acting in Hollywood for a few years when she first earned widespread praise for originating the role of Sarah Connor in The Terminator. She also starred in the first Children of the Corn film around the same time. By 1987, Hamilton landed a lead role on the popular CBS drama Beauty and the Beast, opposite Ron Perlman.

With her performance as a now battle hardened Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, Hamilton cemented Sarah as one of the all-time great badass female heroes in cinema history. She’s an integral part of why the sequel is so iconic in pop culture history, and most fans consider it a shame that she chose not to return for Terminator 3 in 2003, feeling that her presence might have elevated the material. That film killed Sarah Connor off, but through the magic of reboot retcons, Sarah didn’t stay dead.

While Terminator: Dark Fate was a box office failure, it earned quite a few positive reviews, and many were quite happy to see Hamilton slip seamlessly back into the role that made her a legend. Hamilton says she’s done with playing Sarah now, but at least she got one last hurrah. Still, she didn’t just vanish from Hollywood for decades, and here’s what she got up to between Terminator movies.

Terminator: What Linda Hamilton Did Between T2 & Dark Fate

Linda Hamilton’s first acting role after playing Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day came in 1994 murder mystery film Silent Fall, opposite Richard Dreyfuss and John Lithgow, in which a child is the only witness to his parents’ murder. In the 1995 movie Separate Lives, Hamilton stars opposite Jim Belushi as a psychology professor with multiple personality disorder. In a fun treat for Terminator fans, 1996 saw Hamilton reprise the Sarah Connor role in the theme park attraction Terminator 2 3D: Battle Across Time. Moving on to 1997, Hamilton appeared in the political thriller Shadow Conspiracy, alongside Charlie Sheen and Donald Sutherland, in which a presidential adviser is the target of an assassin. 1997 also saw Hamilton star alongside Pierce Brosnan in the volcano disaster blockbuster Dante’s Peak.

Hamilton also guest starred as Laura on a 1997 episode of Frasier, and did voice roles for both The New Batman Adventures and Batman Beyond in the late 1990s, as well as on the Hercules animated TV series. Moving ahead a bit to 2005 – Hamilton also starred in lots of made for cable movies, which fill in a lot of the gaps between her bigger projects – Hamilton reunited with Belushi on an episode of his sitcom According to Jim. In 2006, Hamilton appeared in the acclaimed FX miniseries Thief, starring Andre Braugher. Hamilton again briefly returned to Sarah Connor via a vocal cameo in 2009’s Terminator Salvation. That same year she also appeared as Carol in 11 episodes of the Canadian cop show The Line.

The most recent decade saw Hamilton book several interesting TV roles. In 2010, she played a character also named Linda on two episodes of Showtime’s pot comedy Weeds, and also began a recurring role as Mary Bartowski, mother to Zachary Levi’s titular spy on the cult hit Chuck. Hamilton also recurred as Pilar on the sci-fi series Defiance, and as Acacia on the dark fantasy drama Lost Girl. Her most recent gig prior to Terminator: Dark Fate was voicing a Sarah Connor DLC character in the video game Gears 5.

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