Linda Hamilton talks about physically abusing her husbands

Linda Hamilton is 52 years old, but looking at her most recent pictures, the actress looks at least a decade older. It’s hard to imagine she was once perceived as the sexiest ass-kicking heroine on the planet after she appeared next to Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first Terminator movie 25 years ago. But Linda thinks it’s a miracle she’s even alive today.

While women strove to look like her, Hamilton’s life was far from enviable. After the death of her father when she was five, she became a compulsive eater, hiding food under her bed.

 She resorted to drink and drugs in her 20s and then suffered from bipolar disorder, a form of manic depression, for 20 years before it was diagnosed.

Today she says it contributed to the breakdown of both of her two marriages. Her husbands – the second was Terminator director James Cameron – lived in fear of her mood swings and rages.

‘I had years of suffering and I made everyone around me suffer, too,’ she says. ‘When I was up, I could stay up all night, but when I was down, it was like falling into a manhole and being unable to climb out.

After being diagnosed with bipolar disorder 13 years ago I was finally given the right antidepressants.’

Her first marriage to actor Bruce Abbott ended after seven years when he walked out while she was pregnant with their son, Dalton, now 19.

‘I was terrifying and could get quite physical. When Bruce left, he said: “You’re a bully”, and he was right. One day, he spilt something on the couch and looked at me with such fear that I could see the impact of my behaviour all those years.’