The physical reality can be very different.
Running, falling, stunt rehearsals and repeated movements can leave lasting effects on an actor's body.
Hamilton has acknowledged this reality.
Discussing how she maintains her fitness today, she told AARP that she has dealt with physical wear related to years of stunts and demanding work.
Her response is not to recreate the extreme training associated with Sarah Connor.
Instead, she has adopted something much more adaptive.
While preparing herself physically and maintaining fitness for Stranger Things, Hamilton said she was attending physical therapy three times a week.
Those sessions could involve Pilates, yoga, free weights, machines and cables.
But there was no rigid formula.
Rather than walking into the gym and automatically declaring a specific muscle-group day, Hamilton appreciated being able to assess what her body actually needed.
Maybe something needed strengthening.
Maybe something needed stretching.
Maybe an area needed greater mobility.
That approach is markedly different from the punishing transformation audiences associate with Sarah Connor.
At 69, Hamilton is no longer trying to prove that she can force her body into submission.
She is listening to it.
And that may represent another form of strength entirely.
Strength Does Not Have to Mean Youth
Popular culture often presents strength and aging as opposites.
Youth is associated with speed, beauty, physical power and possibility.
Older age is too often presented primarily through loss.
Hamilton challenges that narrative.
She has openly acknowledged the physical limitations and accumulated injuries that come with decades of demanding work, but she also describes gaining something with age that younger versions of herself did not necessarily possess.
Self-possession.
Hamilton told AARP that she now feels she fully inhabits herself in a way she did not when she was younger.
She no longer feels compelled to please everyone, prove herself or show off.
That may not create the kind of dramatic montage found in an action film, but it represents a profound transformation.
Sarah Connor became powerful by preparing herself for war.
Linda Hamilton appears to have found another kind of power by no longer treating herself as an opponent.
Entering the World of Stranger Things
Hamilton’s willingness to embrace age has not meant disappearing from major productions.
Far from it.
She joined the fifth and final season of Netflix’s Stranger Things, bringing one of the most recognizable faces of 1980s science fiction into a series deeply influenced by the pop culture of that same era.
Netflix confirmed Hamilton's casting well before the season arrived, and the actress admitted that she was already a genuine fan of the series.
Her reaction to being invited into the Stranger Things universe contained an amusing contradiction: she loved the show so much that becoming part of it complicated her relationship with it.
Hamilton has explained that she generally does not watch her own performances because she struggles to separate herself as an actress from herself as a viewer.
So joining a series she loved meant becoming part of something she might otherwise simply have enjoyed as a fan.
Still, the opportunity was too exciting to ignore.
Hamilton plays Dr. Kay, a scientist connected to the military occupation of Hawkins.
According to Netflix's official character material, Dr. Kay takes over scientific work connected to Dr. Brenner and becomes an adversary to the central group, pursuing Eleven for her own purposes.
The Duffer brothers also indicated that Hamilton herself helped shape their conception of the character.
Once she was cast, they leaned further into Dr. Kay's military qualities.
She wasn't simply going to stand inside a laboratory delivering exposition.
She could fight.
She could handle a weapon.
She could be intimidating.
In other words, the creators understood exactly what Linda Hamilton brings with her.
When she walks into a science-fiction story, decades of cinematic history walk in with her.
From Sarah Connor to Dr. Kay
There is something wonderfully circular about Hamilton joining Stranger Things.