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Actress Sheds Brawn For Aids Role Linda Hamilton Weakens Her Body To Mimic Disease

Ron Miller San Jose Mercury News

If you haven’t seen Linda Hamilton on screen since she played the buffed heroine of “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” prepare yourself for a shock.

Her latest character, Rosemary Holmstrom, is certainly every bit as brave as Sarah Connor in the “Terminator” films, but the menace she faces in “A Mother’s Prayer” is AIDS, a disease that has stripped her of muscle and flesh, leaving her little more than her steely resolve to hold her frail body together.

Tonight’s USA film, one of a series of earnest and well-crafted new movies with which the network is rebuilding its image, is the true story of a Brooklyn single mom who’s resolved to her own death but desperately wants to find a good home for her 8-year-old son, T.J. (Noah Fleiss).

Though nowhere near as profoundly moving as Ann-Margret’s 1983 “Who Will Love My Children?,” the measuring stick for all mother love and sacrifice movies since the 1937 version of “Stella Dallas,” the USA film is honest, sincere and boasts a fine performance by Hamilton, who hadn’t tackled a serious role in several years.

For Hamilton, playing the real-life Holmstrom, who died late last year, posed several challenges, including her willingness to devastate the body she has kept exceptionally fit since she whipped herself into the finest shape of her life for “Terminator 2.”

“So many people think I’m just this incredibly ferocious, fierce woman,” Hamilton says. “Sarah Connor has sort of etched herself into my psyche and will never go away.

“So I chose (to play) this woman because she was a great balance of strength and frailty.”

Hamilton had barely a month to prepare to play Holmstrom. During that time, she shed 12 pounds of well-defined muscle.

“I went on a very stringent diet,” she said. “It was all aerobic, no weight lifting, because I had to decrease my muscle mass.

“I ate minimeals, just like 1,200 calories a day, and brought myself to a feeling of great weakness.”

In the film, Holmstrom learns she is HIV-positive not long after she has been widowed. Because she was not sexually promiscuous and didn’t use drug needles, she at first refused to believe the results of tests.

Though the film doesn’t deal with it, Holmstrom later discovered she had contracted the virus from her late husband, who had died, presumably of Hodgkin’s disease, without knowing he was AIDS-infected. That was determined when his body was exhumed and tested for signs of the virus.

Hamilton wanted her performance to ring with reality, which is why she starved herself to the point where she actually began to fall ill with flu symptoms and so suppressed her immune system that she caught a mouth infection from her daughter that healthy adults normally don’t catch.

“I had to know what it was like,” said Hamilton. “I mean, there’s a certain strength about me just naturally and I knew that I had to sort of sink in on myself. So I got very, very thin.”

The visual result is shocking.

Hamilton as Holmstrom is haggard and gaunt. Without makeup, she often appears wan and sick, ready to topple over from a gust of wind.

“If I missed one fat-free Fig Newton, I would feel like I had to faint,” Hamilton explained. “This is something I like to do in my work - just take myself there physically.

“It’s instinctive in me to go as far as I can. I had to know what it was like to feel sick and weak.”

Holmstrom’s story surfaced in the media when she told it to a New York tabloid newspaper as a desperate way to bypass the coldhearted child welfare and adoption process. Such agencies could give Holmstrom no guarantees about where her son might end up, so she decided to find and approve her son’s adoptive parents, essentially by soliciting volunteers, before she died.

Though Hamilton is on camera in virtually every scene, veteran director Larry Elikann has surrounded her with top talent in small roles, including Bruce Dern and Kate Nelligan as the couple that wants to adopt T.J., S. Epatha Merkerson of NBC’s “Law & Order” as a helpful nurse, and cross-dressing musician/ actor RuPaul as Dede, a counselor at the Gay Men’s Health Clinic, where a tearful and terrified Rosemary finally goes to find help.

For Hamilton, “A Mother’s Prayer” is an attempt to remind people she’s not just a movie action hero but a risk-taking dramatic actress as well. It was also a mission of principle for her.

“I don’t think (Sen.) Jesse Helms will ever get it,” she said, “but this movie should speak to a lot of people who believe that these people are bad and deserve the disease and therefore should be deprived of (health) benefits. Because she was a heterosexual, perhaps this movie will speak to members of the religious right that make those bad (generalizations) about victims of AIDS.”