Linda Hamilton

Her genre success overshadowed her impressive range, but Linda Hamilton enjoyed a remarkable and varied career. Trained at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, she became a movie star as Sarah Connor, the mother-to-be of humanity's last hope in James Cameron's action/sci-fi masterpiece, "The Terminator" (1984), and then won over an entirely new set of fans as a doomed lover in the lushly romantic urban fantasy "Beauty and the Beast" (CBS, 1987-1990) opposite Ron Perlman. Her impressive turn - and even more impressive muscular physique - as the ultimate warrior woman in "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" (1991) ensured her a measure of cinematic immortality and marked her greatest professional triumph. She made headlines with her marriage to (and lucrative divorce from) James Cameron, and notched a series of well-received, award-winning TV-movie and voiceover roles, but made her biggest subsequent impact as a vocal advocate for mental illness issues when she publicly revealed her lifelong struggle with bipolar disorder. Hamilton was a talented, tough actress who deserved a bigger career beyond her iconic genre work, but made the most of the one she had.