Sure, she went from damsel-in-distress to cyborg-crusher in the last few minutes of 1984's "The Terminator," but Linda Hamilton's first appearance in the 1991 sequel as a sleek, muscular, tough-as-nails mama bear was still a genuine shock for moviegoers. As Sarah Connor, Hamilton fits in nicely with writer-director james Cameron's other tough females (Sigourney Weaver in "Aliens," Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in "The Abyss"). In "The Terminator," she apologizes for spilling food on a customer at a restaurant where she waits tables; in "T2" she stabs her psychotherapist in the kneecap with a pen and threatens to break all of the 215 bones in a guard's body. 

--Dave Lewis