Hasta la vista Linda Hamilton

After battling unstoppable cyborg assassins twice, Linda Hamilton won't be back. The 46-year-old actress bowed out of reprising her role as waitress-turned-world-saviour Sarah Connor in next summer's Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. "(The script) just didn't take Sarah Connor anywhere," Hamilton tells the Sun from Los Angeles.

"Of course, that script I read was several years ago and I'm sure it was reworked mightily because Sarah's not in it anymore, but it just didn't have the soul that the others did. Despite all the action of the Terminator movies, they were actually pretty high-minded.

"There was really a message there about the human condition, and Terminator 3 had no regard for human life whatsoever."

Those who have seen the recently released T3: Rise of the Machines trailer -- featuring, again, a gun-toting, sunglasses-donning Arnold Schwarzenegger protecting a grown-up John Connor from a female terminator sent back from the future -- would probably agree Hamilton's decision to bow out of the follow-up was the correct one. It's a hodgepodge of underwhelming action sequences and bad dialogue that looks like warmed-over T2.

That T3 looks like a dud shouldn't come as too much of a surprise considering Terminator creator -- and Hamilton's ex-husband and Canadian Oscar-winner James Cameron -- had nothing to do with the third film.

Ironically, Hamilton says she gets along better with Cameron now that they're divorced than she ever did when they were married. The two have a daughter, nine-year-old Josephine Archer Cameron.

"I have the relationship with him now that I always wanted," she laughs. "I think now we look at ourselves as these great warriors that gave it our all."

The topic of Cameron comes up after Hamilton mentions the extended family she'll be seeing over the holidays. Hamilton also has a 13-year-old son with first husband, Bruce Abbot.

The holidays are also on Hamilton's mind because of the Christmas-themed TV movie she stars in tonight.

Airing tonight, the Montreal-filmed Silent Night stars Hamilton in the real-life story of Fritz Vincken, a 12-year-old German boy who, along with his schoolteacher mother, invited three American and three German soldiers to share Christmas Eve dinner in their mountain cabin in the Ardennes Forest during the Second World War. It co-stars Matthew Harbour, Martin Newfeld and Romano Ozari.

"It appealed to me because it was a Hallmark production and they do such good work. But definitely, it's also because I have children and I really haven't done a lot that's appropriate for children. But it was also a wonderfully well-rounded statement, looking at war from all sides."

Hamilton began her career as a child actress, working in local Maryland productions before moving on to the Strasberg Institute in New York.

After acting in soap operas and TV movies, she landed the lead in Terminator, a low-budget thriller that turned into an unexpected smash. Shortly thereafter she spent a few seasons on the romantic fable Beauty and the Beast (which starred Hamilton as an assistant district attorney who was in love with, as David Letterman once described him, "a big monkey") and starred in T2, in which Connor had turned into a mean, lean fighting machine. "I got offered a lot of lesbian and police officer (roles) after that," Hamilton says.

With action roles behind her, she prefers to act in projects she cares about, such as Silent Night, and on stage. "I see myself finishing my career in London in a theatre, just being this eccentric actress who's there after all the American actors have come and gone."

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