She wasn’t exercising good judgment.
“The Terminator” star Linda Hamilton wasn’t too convinced that co-star Arnold Schwarzenegger could act back in the day.
The former bodybuilder, 75, dropped his three-part Netflix docuseries, “Arnold,” on Wednesday, with Hamilton, 66, revealing that she had a “snotty definition” of what an actor should be.
And Schwarzenegger did not fit the bill.
“By our snotty definition, Arnold was a poser, a bodybuilder pretending to be an actor,” Hamilton recalled.
“But because I was curious, I went and stood off the sidelines watching Arnold, and I bought it. The physicality and the stiffness, and all of the things that he was implementing. I was like, ‘OK, this might work,'” she explained.
“The Terminator,” directed by James Cameron, premiered in 1984. The iconic sci-fi flick launched a franchise, with the latest installment, “Terminator: Dark Fate,” released in 2019.
In “Arnold,” the “Chuck” actress noted how she doubted “The Terminator”‘s box-office potential, calling it “truly just another job.”
“I didn’t think that it was particularly greater than over scripts that I’d read. I mean, really clueless,” Hamilton reasoned. “It was very low-budget, and we were all rather new at it. I definitely had my doubts.”
For his part, the ex-California governor remembered how fit Hamilton was by the time they shot 1991’s “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.”
Schwarzenegger stated: “A few days before we start shooting, Jim Cameron says to me, ‘Let’s all get together and have a nice dinner.’ Linda comes in and she takes her sweater off and I’m looking at her arms.”
He remarked that she had “veins on the biceps, and then triceps. Everything was like a bodybuilder, but except miniature.”
“I said, ‘I can’t believe that son of a b—h is f–king more cut than me,'” he joked.
Schwarzenegger has made appearances in five of the franchise’s six movies. He announced in 2019 that he is done playing the cyborg assassin.
To the Hollywood Reporter, the “Predator” star dished that while he’s over starring in the series, the “franchise is not done.”
“I got the message loud and clear that the world wants to move on with a different theme when it comes to ‘The Terminator.’ Someone has to come up with a great idea,” he suggested.
The Austrian-American entertainer acknowledged that “The Terminator” was “largely responsible” for his worldwide success and long career.
“I always would look at it very fondly,” said Schwarzenegger, who served as California’s governor from 2003 to 2011.
