Headey's not your big-screen Sarah Connor

By Cindy Clark, USA TODAY
Ask Lena Headey the wrong question, and you might get terminated.
The star of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is tired of dealing with comparisons to the Terminator movies' Sarah Connor, played famously by Linda Hamilton. "She did a great job. Hopefully I'm doing a great job," says Headey, 34.

"There is a band of Terminator fans that will never be swayed, so they can just watch the movies," she adds. "But most people are really open to it. I do what I do, I can't control who thinks what."

The series (Mondays, Fox, 9 p.m. ET/PT) takes place after the second Terminator movie, before Sarah is terminated in the third film. It enjoyed the season's top-rated premiere for a scripted series, with 18.4 million viewers, and last week pulled in a respectable 8.7 million viewers.

For Headey, it marks her first major TV role, though the British actress has had steady work in film, including The Brothers Grimm and the British romantic comedy Imagine Me & You. She stars in the psychological horror film The Broken, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

Like many in Hollywood, Headey is annoyed with not working because of the writers' strike.

"I moved (from London) just for this. Now I'm just sitting on my (butt)," she says. "It's frustrating. I want to go back to work." She calls it an "enforced holiday."

But it's not all bad. She has a new husband, having married boyfriend Pete Paul in May, and "the strike has given us our honeymoon. I'm just enjoying spending time with my husband."

And relaxing. "I'm very simple," she says. "The sun's out, I walk my dogs."

There are six more episodes of Terminator, then it, too, will disappear till the writers' strike is resolved and the remaining episodes can be produced.

"I always sit and read these scripts, and on every page there's a surprise," Headey says. "Everything links up; it's really complicated and fun. There's humor in there, too, surprisingly. I hope people come with us on the journey."