Arnold Schwarzenegger, who played the titular Terminator, and Linda Hamilton, who led the cast as Sarah Connor. It turns out, however, that a different actor who went on to star in another famed ’80s time-travel sci-fi flick nearly got the part before Hamilton.
In a 2015 interview on the “Nerdist” podcast, Lea Thompson, of “Back to the Future” fame, revealed that she had once been in the mix to portray Sarah Connor in “The Terminator.” “They were really interested in me for the first ‘Terminator,'” Thompson explained. So, what went wrong? A mishap involving a borrowed car that caused some property damage derailed the whole thing. As Thompson recalled:
“I didn’t have a car. I borrowed my boyfriend’s, cousin’s Pacer and something was wrong with the transmission, so the fluid was leaking out and you had to keep adding transmission fluid to this Pacer. The audition was up on Mullholland and they’re house was down a hill. It was when [Gale Ann Hurd and James Cameron] were still together. So, I actually slid down their hill and took out two new trees and some lights as I slid in.”
At the time, Cameron was indeed dating Gale Ann Hurd, a legendary producer in her own right, with the two getting married for a time in 1985. “It wasn’t really badass, because I was in a Pacer. So, I didn’t get the part,” Thompson added. “I did audition, but I was really upset about causing at least $5,000 worth of damage.”
