Linda Hamilton Once Felt James Cameron Left Her for ‘Titanic’
Actor Linda Hamilton and Terminator director James Cameron were once involved in a close marital relationship. But Hamilton at one point felt Cameron’s work ethic played a role in pulling the two of them further apart.
Linda Hamilton and James Cameron initially didn’t get along when they met
Hamilton and Cameron had a bit of a complicated relationship even before officially becoming a couple. When they collaborated on Terminator, Hamilton asserted that they were often at odds on set. Partially because Hamilton considered herself one of the only actors who wasn’t afraid to butt heads with Cameron.
“I’d known him from the first Terminator film and we did not particularly like each other or get along,” Hamilton once told Daily Mail. “I am probably the only actress in history to have stood up to him.”
Cameron was known for being very hands-on during filming. Actors like Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, and others have often spoken about Cameron’s temper and his strict approach to filmmaking. But Hamilton confided that she often found these traits attractive.
“Knowing he’s so controlling, I just got really strong,” Hamilton said. “What really helped me open my heart to Jimbo was suddenly seeing him as a kid having a temper tantrum. But seeing him control everything on set was really sexy.”
Linda Hamilton once felt ‘Titanic’ was the mistress James Cameron left her for
Hamilton and Cameron would later form an intense relationship throughout the 90s. But severe cracks in their relationship started to develop when Cameron set out to direct his passion project Titanic.
Shooting Titanic coincided with a break that Hamilton and Cameron both agreed to. This led to Cameron falling for his current wife Suzy Amis, who he gave a small part to in Titanic. Hamilton recalled this being a considerably unpleasant experience, but not because of Cameron being unfaithful.
“Titanic was the most painful thing in the world,” Hamilton said. “But this wasn’t because Jim was cheating on me. Jim went off with Suzy because we were taking a break from each other and he was free to go with her. It was a painful time because we’d had a relationship where I’d push him away, then he’d push me away. Frankly, most of our relationship was us taking a big break.”
If anything, Hamilton felt it was the Titanic work itself that drove the two apart.
“Titanic was the mistress he left me for,” she once said in an interview with UK’s Daily Sun (via HuffPost). “He was the kind of man who really would rather be at work with the mistress than at home with the wife. That was hard to come to terms with.”
Linda Hamilton was devastated after breaking up with James Cameron
Eventually, Hamilton and Cameron would divorce for good, with Cameron ending up marrying Amis. Hamilton confided that it took quite a long time for her to recover after the two went their separate ways.
“When I broke up with Jim, I was completely devastated for years. I remember immediately assuming that I was going to enter into another relationship, that it was critical to my essence. But I don’t jump from person to person very easily at all,” she told The New York Times in 2019. “At the end of every relationship, I’d be like, ‘Another two or three years without sex? What a waste of a woman!’ Because it would always take that long. I do not give myself over that easily.”
Nowadays, however, Hamilton seems to have rebounded nicely from her tumultuous relationship with Cameron.
“I have a very romantic relationship with my world every day and the people who are in it,” she said in a separate New York Times interview.
