Linda Hamilton Biography, Photos, Pictures

Linda Hamilton Although gifted with the ability to portray characters to their full capacity and having a successful career that spans thirty years in Hollywood, this actress has been dogged with problems almost from the start. Her father was killed in a car crash when she was just five years old, her second husband had an affair, and she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder; but through it all Linda has fought to receive several Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.Linda Hamilton was born in Salisbury, Maryland, on September 26, 1956, as one of twin sisters with Leslie being the other half. It was her mother's second marriage and the girls grew up with a stepfather who was a firefighter. The twins attended Wicomico Junior High, where Linda began her acting career at local children's theater groups. After college training and dramatic lessons conducted by former director Nicholas Ray she was cast in several unmemorable television roles such as the soap opera Secrets of Midland Heights.Linda studied for two years at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, before moving on to acting studies in New York, where she studied under Lee Strasberg at his workshops before taking on small guest appearances in television.Hamilton's career really took off when she was cast in the role of Sarah Connor, the target for the homicidal intentions of futuristic android Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator in 1984. Her performance was so well received in Hollywood that she was further cast in the sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. In between the filming of the two Terminator movies, Linda played the role of Catherine Chandler in the TV version of Beauty and the Beast, opposite Ron Perlman. For her part she received an Emmy and Golden Globe nomination.Following The Terminator, Hamilton starred in Black Moon Rising, an action thriller starring Tommy Lee Jones. She then returned to television in the mystery comedy Murder, She Wrote, starring Angela Lansbury, which scored favorable reviews.Once again, due to her profile being heightened from her role in the Terminator movies, Linda was asked to host Saturday Night Live and in the same year she received a Golden Globe nomination for her role as a mother diagnosed with AIDS in A Mother's Prayer. She then went on to star in Shadow Conspiracy and Dante's Peak, when she starred with Pierce Brosnan.In 1982 Linda married her first husband, actor Bruce Abbott, but was divorced in 1989 after the couple had one son, Dalton, in October 1989. She went on to marry film director James Cameron in 1997, but once again the marriage was short-lived and the couple divorced in 1999. They had a daughter, Josephine, born in 1993. This divorce was particularly sad for Linda when she discovered her husband having an affair with actress Suzy Amis while on the set of Titanic.Facing her demons, Linda appeared on the Larry King Show in 2004 to reveal that she had suffered from bipolar disorder for most of her life. She admitted that the main reason for both her divorces had been due to her bad treatment of her husbands, with both verbal and physical abuse. Having sought treatment and with the love of her children, Linda said that she now regrets the pain that she caused those around her. She reported that she resisted medication for the illness until she was forty years old, but will now be on anti-depressants for the rest of her life.