Hamilton's greatest success came with "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" (1991), an awesomely popular sequel that depicted the relationship between a young John Connor (Edward Furlong) and the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) sent to protect him. Between installments, Hamilton’s character had metamorphosed from a wan waitress to a feisty warrior woman. She undertook rigorous physical training to prepare for the role, and her muscular gun-toting persona was seen as a defining instance of a new breed of tough screen heroines. She followed up with two less prominent features, “Silent Fall” (1994), in which she played the wife of a controversial psychologist (Richard Dreyfuss) treating an autistic boy (Ben Faulkner) who witnessed the double murder of his parents, and “Separate Lives” (1995), where she starred as a psychiatrist suffering from multiple personality disorder who hires an ex-police officer (James Belushi) to unravel the mystery of her strange double life. Both projects failed to make much of an impression on the public.
In “A Mother’s Prayer” (USA, 1995), Hamilton portrayed a widowed mother finding a home for her 8-year-old son (Noah Fleiss) after being diagnosed as HIV-positive. Returning to features, she had a supporting role in the little-seen political thriller “Shadow Conspiracy” (1997), starring Charlie Sheen as a trusted White House advisor who attempts to foil an assassination attempt against the president. Hamilton’s next feature, “Dante’s Peak” (1997), generated more attention than anything she had done since the last “Terminator” movie. A by-the-book disaster flick about a rumbling volcano threatening a small Pacific Northwest town, “Dante’s Peak” benefited from good performances from Hamilton as the town’s mayor and Pierce Brosnan as the geologist sent warn an unbelieving populace about the imminent danger. The actress rounded out 1997 with an episode on “Frasier” (NBC, 1993-2004), playing a woman who accidentally leaves a message on Frasier’s answer machine and is surprised to find him meeting her at the airport.
Several movies-of-the-week piled up on her resume, including “Rescuers: Stories of Courage: Two Couples” (Showtime, 1998), a historical drama about non-Jews risking their lives to save victims from the Holocaust; “Point Last Seen” (CBS, 1998), an adaptation of Hannah Nyala’s book in which Hamilton plays the head of a search-and-rescue team with a troubled past on a mission to save a 9-year-old girl lost in the desert; and “On the Line” (ABC, 1998), where she starred as a female LAPD detective transferred to all-male Robbery/Homicide division. She then appeared in another feature, “The Secret Life of Girls” (1999), a black comedy set in 1973 about a teenager (Majandra Delfino) dealing with her dad’s infidelity and finding a boy to be interested in her. After voicing characters on episodes of “Disney’s Hercules” (ABC, 1998-2000) and “Batman Beyond” (WB, 1998-2002), she starred in the made-for-TV movie “The Color of Courage” (USA, 1999), a historical drama based on a true-story about a black couple (Lynn Whitfield and Roger Guenveur Smith) driven from their new neighborhood by the all-white residents thanks to a lawsuit that was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court.
In the Lifetime drama “Sex and Mrs. X” (2000), Hamilton portrayed a magazine writer who experiences a sexual reawakening after an interview with a famous Parisian madam and her husband’s departure from the marriage. She next had a supporting role as a woman with a crush on her coworker (Treat Williams) in the straight-to-video psychological thriller, “Skeletons in the Closet” (2000), then a recurring voice role as Dr. Ozma Furbanna on the children’s animated series, “Buzz Lightyear of Star Command” (UPN-ABC, 2000-2001). After starring in part three of “A Girl Thing” (Showtime, 2001), a four-part miniseries featuring women confiding their life’s major transitions to a psychiatrist (Stockard Channing) with troubles of her own, Hamilton was featured in the made-for-TV movies “Bailey’s Mistake” (ABC, 2001), about a widowed woman and her two children left with only a mysterious magical island off the coast of Maine, and “Silent Night” (Hallmark, 2002), the true-story about a German mother and her 12-year-old son who invite American and Nazi soldiers to share Christmas Eve dinner in their mountain cabin in 1944.
After a supporting role in the dramatic feature “Smile” (2005), about an American teenager (Mika Boorem) who travels to China as part of a charitable organization to meet her Chinese counterpart who receives corrective facial surgery, Hamilton made an appearance in “The Kid & I” (2005), about a down-and-out actor (Tom Arnold) hired to write a sequel to the action movie that made him famous over a decade ago.