My Movie Life: Linda Hamilton

Vincent Price put me off movies for the rest of my life. It terrified me, terrified me. I had to sleep with my sisters.

Actually we had all seen it together, we had begged our mom to take us, and of course it was completely inappropriate.

But somehow, after a lot of begging, a neighbour took us to see it. My sisters and I bed-hopped for about six months after that. We could not sleep.

Skeletons, blood coming up out of the sink, I was five years old I can still remember to this day how terrifying that movie was. I haven’t watched it since.

Because of the love of language. It’ll help kids love Shakespeare early on.

It makes Shakespeare understandable and relatable.

I am just such a fan of language, language is everything to me.

Romeo + Juliet just a wonderful way of getting children to understand the language of Shakespeare and not be intimidated.

It’s on my list. I just haven’t seen it yet. You would not believe the films I haven’t seen.

I never see films when I’ve read the book, it’s so much better in my imagination so there’s no point going to see a film I’ve read, and I’d rather read than see.

Chicago I never saw, most of the hits from last year I didn’t see.

I have got better at watching my screeners when they come, but basically I’m in bed with my book all the time.

Braveheart is on my list, because it’s a family favourite of my sisters, but I truly felt that maybe I wasn’t strong enough to see the brutality in that.

I go through periods of feeling too vulnerable.

Defenceless beatings bother me to no end. Gunplay, okay. You each have a gun? Great. Even someone threatening someone with a gun, I know that’s not real, I know they aren’t real bullets. But somehow, beatings upset me to no end.

I actually didn’t know that until many years ago.

I was watching a boxing match and I found myself standing up and screaming, without even knowing I was going to do it. I was on my feet screaming, ‘Stop the fight, stop the fight!’

The second Terminator.

It’s always: ‘Oh god, I can’t believe I’m seeing this, but I’m glued to the spot.’

If I find it on, I never go past it. I don’t watch much television, but if it’s on and I catch it, I will watch it to the end, it’s just that kind of a film. It’s guilty because it’s my movie.

It’s always on TV. I should ask people to pay me a dollar every time they watch that movie, because we didn’t get residuals for that whole film, which was supposed to be the big payload. But then Carilco went bankrupt.

People must think I’m so rich from all the times that’s on TV. I actually have friends that send me a dollar when they watch it because they just think it’s cute. ‘I saw the movie, I owe you a dollar.’

Titanic, but not for the same reasons it makes you cry.

Let’s just say it’d have to be a comedy. It’d have to be a really funny comedy. It’s the only way to die.

But not Monty Python. It used to make me laugh, but no longer. When you look back, Monty Python doesn’t really hold its own. Maybe I’ve gotten cynical.

Not Woody Allen, though he has his moments.

I don’t even like The Producers.

We need more good comedies don’t we?

The best movies should never be remade.

I love Roman Holiday, could any two actors ever do that again? No. It’s Gregory and Audrey, you could never remake it.

A good movie shouldn’t be remade and a bad movie shouldn’t be remade.

So many people are remaking, remaking, remaking, is that all we’re capable of? Regurgitating the same films?

Why would you make a great movie over again, so people can ridicule you and you can lose by comparison? I’ve never understood that, but it is the day and age of let’s make that again.

And they’re not even films now, they’re TV shows. The A-Team – hello? What’s going on?

Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900. It’s one of the few movies I’ve seen over and over and over again, and how many hours is that? It’s four hours!

It’s everything, it’s the score, it’s Morricone, it’s some of the best actors lined up. You get Robert De Niro, Sterling Hayden, Burt Lancaster, just one great actor after another.

Donald Sutherland… I could never look at him again. I even worked with him after, but he will always be Attila to me.

It’s just one of those movies that really got me, I would be happy to see that over and over again, there’s magic and beauty and grit and greatness and all those things.

Home movies. They’re just for me and they’re just the most wonderful thing.

Holy Water is out now...