Linda Hamilton's Real Name: Linda Carroll Hamilton

Quick answer: Linda Hamilton's full name is Linda Carroll Hamilton. She was born on September 26, 1956, in Salisbury, Maryland. She is usually billed as Linda Hamilton. She is best known as Sarah Connor in The Terminator (1984), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), and later Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) (Encyclopedia.com).

Real name and early life

Encyclopedia.com gives her full name as Linda Carroll Hamilton, born September 26, 1956, in Salisbury, Maryland. Her father was a physician. She attended Washington College in Maryland and studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute. The Library of Congress files her as "Hamilton, Linda, 1956-," with notes confirming the Salisbury birth date.

Career highlights

Encyclopedia.com lists early stage work in New York, including a 1975 appearance at the New York Shakespeare Festival and a 1977 production of Richard III. An early film role was Vicky Baxter in Children of the Corn (1984). The same year she played Sarah Connor in James Cameron's The Terminator, the part that made her widely recognizable. She returned as Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), a performance that brought MTV Movie Awards and a Saturn Award for best actress from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films.

Between those films she starred in the television series Beauty and the Beast, earning Golden Globe nominations for best actress in a dramatic series in 1988 and 1989. Later credits listed by Encyclopedia.com include the disaster film Dante's Peak (1997) and television movies such as A Mother's Prayer, which brought a Golden Globe nomination in 1996, and The Color of Courage.

In 2019 she returned to the role of Sarah Connor in Terminator: Dark Fate, a later chapter in the series discussed at length by the Los Angeles Times. More than 25 years after Terminator 2, the film brought Hamilton back as Connor alongside a new generation of characters. She was married to Cameron from 1997 to 1999; they have a daughter. An earlier marriage, to actor Bruce Abbott, ended in 1989.

Name notes for searchers

Linda Carroll Hamilton is the documented full name; Linda Hamilton is the short form used in credits and publicity. She should not be confused with other public figures named Linda Hamilton.