"I'm ashamed to call myself his mother!" joked original Sarah Connor, Linda Hamilton, on Saturday afternoon. She was speaking to fans - including SFX - about Christian "John Connor" Bale and his recent on-set outburst.
Hamilton was on the London Expo main stage and had been asked a question about what she thought of Christian Bale's explosion on the set of Terminator Salvation, and how she and James Cameron might have dealt with such a confrontation if they'd been involved.
"You would never find me acting like that," she explained. "I actually wouldn't tolerate it from other actors on a set either. If I had been in a position to say, 'I'm sorry - we don't do that here!' I would have been the first one to say so."
"And as far as Jim goes, he is usually the one having the temper tantrum! So I think there's no room for anybody else to have a temper tantrum…" She continued: "That said: how embarrassing! It's everything that is wrong with LA. With super stars and super egos there's super bad manners. And I don't ever want to be like that."
Charming everybody with her friendly manner, Hamilton was a total professional, taking questions on everything from her time with Ron Perlman on Beauty And The Beast, to what she thought of TV's The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
"I'd only seen [Lena Headey] in 300 and she was very impressive - quite the looker. So I was like, 'Yeah!' I don't really watch TV but I watched the pilot episode," she revealed, before adding: "It's the hardest thing to step into somebody else's shows and try to fill them. Ten years ago I did a play in LA and I was playing a part that Gene Tierney had played. Every damn review basically said of me, 'She's no Gene Tierney!' You work your heart out and that's all people can say! So I know how Lena must have felt - it's hard."
Hamilton was also asked a rather more philosophical question about whether she thought the rise of malevolent AI was inevitable ("I don't think there's a risk of AI taking over from mankind. I think that's far-fetched. Science wrongly applied can be really bad, but for me the bigger problems are things like cloning.") before heading off to sign autographs. SFX stuck around for the rest of the day and also spoke with the cast from Merlin and original Bionic Woman, Lindsay Wagner. Great fun.
Were you there? Were you one of the many people dressing up as videogame characters in the cosplay world record attempt? If you're still there today (Sunday) you might be able to see our Leah Holmes around the show floor. Look out for our huge SFX sponsorship banners. More information about London Expo can be found on the official site here . Share your convention memories over on our forum !
