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Quick Facts
- NAME: Linda Hamilton
- OCCUPATION: Film Actress
- BIRTH DATE: September 26, 1956 (Age: 56)
- EDUCATION: Washington College
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Salisbury, Maryland
- AKA: Linda Hamilton
- Full Name: Linda Carroll Hamilton
- ZODIAC SIGN: Libra
Best Known For
Actress Linda Hamilton is best known for her role as Sarah Connor in The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day—films that essentially made her the first female action hero and earned her the title of "Body Of The Nineties."
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Play NowLinda Carroll Hamilton. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 12:50, May 25, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/linda-hamilton-20950855.
Linda Carroll Hamilton. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/linda-hamilton-20950855 [Accessed 25 May 2013].
"Linda Carroll Hamilton." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 25 2013, 12:50 http://www.biography.com/people/linda-hamilton-20950855.
"Linda Carroll Hamilton," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/linda-hamilton-20950855 [accessed May 25, 2013].
"Linda Carroll Hamilton," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/linda-hamilton-20950855 (accessed May 25, 2013).
Linda Carroll Hamilton [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 25] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/linda-hamilton-20950855.
Linda Carroll Hamilton, http://www.biography.com/people/linda-hamilton-20950855 (last visited May 25, 2013).
Linda Carroll Hamilton. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/linda-hamilton-20950855. Accessed May 25, 2013.
Synopsis
Linda Hamilton was born into a typical family on September 26, 1956, in Salisbury, Maryland, along with her twin sister, Leslie. She pursued acting while in college, moving to New York and taking acting lessons with director Lee Strasberg. Hamilton started out as a television actress and moved on to films. When she landed a role as Sarah Connor in The Terminator and its sequel,
Hamilton's career bloomed and placed her in the spotlight. Each of her two marriages, first to actor Bruce Abbot and then to director James Cameron, with whom she had worked on The Terminator and its sequel, ended in divorce. She continued acting, primarily in guest roles, on a number of television series.
Early Life
She may have grown up in a seemingly typical white Anglo-Saxon family, but American actress Linda Hamilton spiced up her life and became a successful and well-known entertainer. She was born on September 26, 1956, in Salisbury, Maryland, along with her identical twin sister, Leslie. Hamilton’s father, physician Carroll Stanford Hamilton, died in a car accident when she was 5 years old.
Upon graduating from high school, Hamilton enrolled at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, she she spent two years before relocating to New York to study acting. There, she attended acting workshops given by Lee Strasberg, and landed a major role in the prime-time television soap opera Secrets of Midland Heights in 1980.
Acting Career
Hamilton's acting career took off in 1984, after she played the lead in Stephen King's Children of the Corn, and then alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger as Sarah Connor in The Terminator. The movie was a commercial and critical success and made Hamilton one of Hollywood's first female action heroes. It also helped her land new roles, both in film and television. She starred in Black Moon Rising with Tommy Lee Jones, appeared as a guest-star in the television series Murder She Wrote and starred opposite Ron Perlman in the Beauty and the Beast—a critically acclaimed television series for which Hamilton received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.
In 1991, Hamilton again played Sarah Connor in the Terminator sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, a role for which she underwent intense physical training. "Her toning and muscles brought her the title of "Body Of The Nineties," and her character became a byword for invincibility," according to a February 2011 Daily Mail article. Hamilton's twin, Leslie, was her double in the film, for which Hamilton received two MTV Movie Awards (best female performance and most desirable female).
Following the success of the film, Hamilton, who had been chosen in 1990 by People magazine as one of the world's "50 Most Beautiful People," hosted Saturday Night Live. She returned to television in the latter half of the decade, playing a widowed mother diagnosed with AIDS in A Mother's Prayer in 1995. Hamilton won a CableACE Award for best dramatic performance and earned a Golden Globe nomination for her performance the following year.
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Famous Action Movie Stars
View groupAction movie stars are the heroes and heroines who get our adrenaline pumping. Early action stars include Douglas Fairbanks, the swashbuckling adventurer of the 1920s and '30s; John Wayne, the famous gunslinger of the 1940s and '50s; and Sean Connery, who played the debonair spy Bond—James Bond—in the 1960s. By the 1970s, however, a new maverick action star had hit the silver screen, with rogue cops played by Steve McQueen in Bullitt and Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry, as well as the military mercenary Rambo (Sylvester Stallone). By the 1980s, action movies were literally exploding on screen, with big budgets and big stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Terminator) and Bruce Willis (Die Hard), leading to today's action-packed blockbusters. Here's a look at some of Hollywood's most famous action movie stars, who have kicked some major butt on the big screen.
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Famous Actresses 649 people in this group
