Linda Hamilton: marriage to Cameron ‘terrible’

The actress Linda Hamilton has described her marriage to Avatar director James Cameron as "terrible on every level". Her remarks are just the latest in a welter of bad publicity to hit the directors of the two big films vying for best picture Oscar at next Sunday's ceremony in Los Angeles - Avatar and The Hurt Locker.

Hamilton found fame as the star of the Cameron-directed Terminator. She married him in 1997, the same year his last mega-blockbuster, Titanic, was released. Her forthright remarks came in an interview with The Lady magazine.

"It was terrible on every level," she says of their two-year marriage.
"I wasn't ready, he wasn't ready. He was terribly insecure that I was going to ruin it for him somehow, which didn't make sense since I am an actress in my own right and had been in front of the camera. It was dreadful."

The run-up to the Oscars is often a time for the airing of dirty laundry and the playing of dirty tricks. But as Christopher Goodwin wrote for The First Post on Monday, the atmosphere this year is exceptionally nasty as Cameron's hugely profitable Avatar looks set to be eclipsed by the more critically acclaimed Iraq war movie, The Hurt Locker, made by another of his ex-wives, Kathryn Bigelow.

The LA Times has reported that real-life soldiers believe The Hurt Locker is "Hollywood hokum" and one writer, commenting on the fact that Bigelow's films are invariably about men, has asked whether she is a "feminist pioneer or a tough guy in drag".

According to Hamilton, there's nothing new about pre-Oscar stress. She tells The Lady that she found the pressure of accompanying Cameron to the many awards ceremonies in the wake of Titanic's success unbearable.

"The parading around, the lunches, the stress of being with Jim during the Titanic days - for years I could barely get make-up on, I was shaking so hard, because every damn award show we had was terrible," she says.

Cameron's marriage to Hamilton, his fourth, ended in 1999. The following year he married Suzy Amis, his current wife. At 10 years, Amis is by far Cameron's longest-serving wife, but then she hasn't had to live through one of his big movie successes - until now. ·