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The post Edward Furlong Says He Was ‘Spoiled Rotten’ by James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger on ‘Terminator 2,’ but Admits Fame at 13 ‘Is Really Hard’ first appeared on Crafting Your Home
Edward Furlong was just 13 years old when he landed one of the biggest roles of the 1990s, and more than three decades later, he’s finally unpacking what that experience actually felt like from the inside.
As “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” marks its 35th anniversary, the now 49-year-old actor opened up to PEOPLE in an exclusive interview about working with James Cameron, bonding with his legendary co-stars, and the very real toll that instant childhood fame took on him once the cameras stopped rolling.
Furlong’s casting as John Connor in the 1991 blockbuster turned him into a household name overnight, putting him at the center of one of the biggest action franchises Hollywood had ever produced.
Looking back, he says the experience was overwhelmingly positive, largely because of who he got to learn from. He describes everything that came after the film’s massive success as far more complicated to navigate.
Furlong Says Cameron and His Co-Stars Made His First Film Feel Safe
Furlong had no professional acting experience before stepping onto the set of “Terminator 2,” which makes his description of that first job even more striking.
Rather than feeling overwhelmed working under a director as demanding as Cameron, Furlong says the opposite was true, crediting Cameron’s command of the set with putting him at ease from day one.
“I was spoiled rotten by being able to work with Jim Cameron as like the first director that I worked with because he really knows what he’s doing,” Furlong told PEOPLE. “It’s like you feel safe with Jim Cameron, you know it’s going to be good.”
That sense of safety extended to his relationship with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was already one of the biggest movie stars on the planet when filming began.
Furlong could have easily been intimidated sharing the screen with an action icon of that stature, but he says Schwarzenegger’s work ethic left a much bigger impression on him than his celebrity did.
“He just was the definition of professional. I never, ever saw Arnold complain,” Furlong said. “He always kind of lifted the mood on set.”
Furlong also credited Linda Hamilton, who played his onscreen mother Sarah Connor, with pushing him to raise his own performance simply by being in scenes with her.
He described learning from her experience in a way that shaped how seriously he approached the work, even as a first-time actor barely into his teens.
“I think she made me that much better being able to act alongside her,” Furlong shared. “I learned so much from all of them.” It’s a testament to just how formative that cast was for him that, decades later, he still credits them individually rather than treating the film as one general blur of a memory.
The Years After ‘Terminator 2’ Came With Real Struggles
The success of “Terminator 2” opened plenty of doors for Furlong, who went on to star in 1992’s “Pet Sematary II” and 1998’s “American History X” alongside Edward Norton, a performance still widely regarded as one of the strongest of his career.
But Furlong is candid that the attention that came with being a famous teenager was a completely different challenge than the acting itself.
He didn’t sugarcoat how disorienting it was to grow up with that level of visibility before he’d even had the chance to figure out who he was as a person.
“Growing up in the spotlight is really hard,” Furlong told PEOPLE. “It’s tough enough as an adult to be able to navigate just being a human being and making mistakes, and whatever, when you got a spotlight on you, it’s tough.”
That struggle followed him well into adulthood, as his personal life became increasingly affected by drug and alcohol abuse in the years after his breakout role.
He was charged with two counts of criminal domestic violence in the 2010s following a string of arrests tied to allegations of domestic abuse, and in 2016 he was arrested again for being under the influence of an illicit substance before entering a recovery program.
His struggles with addiction didn’t just affect his personal life; they also derailed one of the biggest opportunities of his career. Furlong’s substance use ultimately cost him the chance to reprise his role as John Connor in 2003’s “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,” which was recast with Nick Stahl.
Rather than avoiding the subject or distancing himself from that chapter, Furlong has chosen to speak openly about it, framing it as part of a larger story rather than something to hide from.
“I made mistakes down the road, a lot of them being drugs and parties and all that stuff,” he told PEOPLE. “But I don’t know, I kind of accepted it at this point as something that has made me who I am today.”
Furlong reached a major recovery milestone in February 2025, when he shared that he had been sober for seven years.
That kind of long-term sobriety stands in sharp contrast to the headlines that once defined so much of his public narrative, and it’s clearly given him the space to reflect on his career with more warmth than regret.
Furlong Is Still Amazed by ‘Terminator 2’s’ Lasting Legacy
Despite everything that happened after “Terminator 2,” Furlong’s memories of actually making the film remain some of the most meaningful of his life.
He described discovering his love of acting on that set as something that came naturally to him from the very beginning, long before fame complicated things.
“I just found acting like very therapeutic, just really gravitated towards it,” Furlong said. “I’m blessed to have been able to, through most of my life, been able to do something that I really love doing.”
More than three decades after the film’s release, Furlong reunited with Hamilton, Michael Biehn, and Robert Patrick at a “Terminator 2” convention in August, giving longtime fans a rare chance to see several members of the original cast together again as the film’s 35th anniversary approached.
Moments like that reunion seem to reinforce how much staying power the movie has, something Furlong says still catches him off guard even now.
“I knew the movie was gonna be big, but like, I had no idea that I’d still be talking to PEOPLE, and I’m, you know, almost 50 years old, and I’m still talking about Terminator 2,” Furlong said.
That kind of longevity is rare even by blockbuster standards, and it says something about how deeply the film embedded itself into pop culture that a role Furlong played as a young teenager is still the thing most people bring up first, decades and dozens of other credits later.
It’s a fitting way to sum up a career that’s had its share of highs and genuinely difficult lows, but one that keeps circling back to a single afternoon on a film set when a 13-year-old with no acting experience found something that would define the rest of his life, for better and for harder, in equal measure.
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